Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.
As a general rule, I’m skeptical of the claims that a new piece of software can deliver revolutionary improvements to the way that businesses run. In my experience, such tools are big on hyperbole and short on results. I’m changing my mind when it comes to one new tool, though: Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007, or MOSS to its friends.
I’m sure that by this point, barely 60 words into this article, many of you doubt me. Those of you that used Lotus Notes 20 odd years ago are probably the loudest objectors. And yes I know that Microsoft is a long way from the bleeding edge of collaboration--but this is different. For the first time in a widely used corporate platform, project managers have access to a flexible tool that will allow their teams to not just share information, but also work collaboratively--and they don’t need developer support to do it.
What is MOSS all about?
SharePoint is not new; it’s been around for some time in different versions, but not many people really took notice. Companies that did implement it often treated it as a simple file share with a pretty interface. It promised collaboration between colleagues, but didn’t always deliver, sometimes due to software limitations, sometimes due to bad implementations.
MOSS is a long way removed from that version of SharePoint. Now the