PMO Collaboration: Sharing with SharePoint

1. Understanding how SharePoint fits into your PMO. SharePoint is a Microsoft offering that provides the server infrastructure to support needs that information workers have such as collaboration, document storage, and the ability to inform others and to be informed by others. While understanding the technology and features of SharePoint is important, understanding how SharePoint fits within your existing PMO and how it can be used by all those involved in support of executing the best practices of the PMO is even more important.
2. Identify and replace disparate repositories. Many organizations have disparate repositories for storing information that quickly erode into a collection of information dumping grounds. Seek to identify and replace with your SharePoint the following kinds of disparate repositories:
   • Documents, spreadsheets, and images stored on PC hard drives
   • Documents, spreadsheets, and images stored on network shares
   • Reference materials stored in three-ringed binders
   • Calendar appoints and todos stored on cork boards
   • Archived files stored on Zip drives and CDs
   • Links for web resources found in a user's My Favorites folder
   • Flip charts and sticky noted from brainstorming sessions and meetings
   • Worker knowledge stored in the heads of subject matter experts
3. Accessing structured assets with SharePoint. Structured assets are found in the databases of the formal systems of the company. Though it is easy to query and aggregate data from these systems, accessing these systems is often difficult to do and it can be challenging to teach busy executives how to login, navigate menus, and run reports to get the information they need. SharePoint makes it possible and easier to control and customize access to these structured assets as well as to consolidate data that comes from multiple back-end sources.
4. Managing unstructured assets with SharePoint. Unlike structured assets, less structured assets such as Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, Visio workflows, etc, are not usually stored in databases. Contrary to what IT staff may think, these assets are stored in more locations than just file servers such as PC hard drives, email folders, removable media, as well as printed and stored in filing cabinets. By providing a manageable environment for less structured information, SharePoint enables and makes it possible to standardize, share, archive, backup and restore, secure, audit, analyze, and legitimize the unstructured assets of the organization.
5. Use SharePoint as the hub. Companies make significant investments in people and technologies. With IT staff already overburdened, it is not surprising to find little support and enthusiasm for implementing yet another complex, high maintenance vendor application. The result is that many users, despite all the advances in systems and technology, find themselves increasingly alienated and isolated from their companies information environments. Most end users will tell you that there is a missing link. Using SharePoint as a hub solves this problem and provides users with access to their information assets.
6. Continually sell your SharePoint. When you and your team discover new features, capabilities, and uses of SharePoint, don't be surprised if everyone else doesn't see the same value that you do. Take the time to show and explain the business value of SharePoint. Seeing is believing and often your users have to see SharePoint in action to understand its value over business as usual approaches.
7. SharePoint isn't right for every organization. Be open to the fact that SharePoint isn't right for every organization. If you have difficulty getting people to cooperate with you or to see the value in SharePoint as a collaborative platform over other alternatives, then you and your organization may be best served by waiting until the winds of change come through. Since it is very difficult to prove the value or push a new way of thinking, be prepared to plant new ideas and be ready to act upon them when the time is right for the organization to fully embrace the change.
8. Using lists with Excel and Access. Quite often, individual departments use spreadsheets and databases for analyzing and keeping track of data. And just as often, the information technology department is completely unaware of these things. As a result, IT may have a problem when a department's spreadsheet stops working or when a department outgrows its database. SharePoint provides extensive features for integrating with Excel and Access such as creating one-to-one relationships between spreadsheets and databases to SharePoint lists providing a natural repository for working with tables, rows, and columns.
9. Managing business processes using workflows. Managing a PMO is all about managing processes and many of these processes are mostly manual. SharePoint provides extensive support for managing organizational processes by using workflows. SharePoint can generate tasks and other kinds of list items to drive movement through the workflow. Rather than keeping all the information about processes filed away where few people will take the time to find and read them, SharePoint has a workflow feature that triggers and tracks the processes associated with your documents.
10. Using Portal Sites. SharePoint 2007 provides a new kind of site template called a portal site template. The portal site template lets you define a hierarchy of sites such as a PMO site and project sites that can all be created at once. So, rather than creating project sites one at a time with site templates, portal site templates create a set of multiple sites that are intended for use together.

As always, if you have a SharePoint tip or two, share it here..!