Friday, February 20, 2009

SharePoint functional consultants - a response

I've been reading a very interesting blog by Kristian Kalsing this morning which weighs further into the debate around "on time and on budget" delivery of SharePoint projects... Kristian arguers that the SharePoint world could benefit from the breaking up and designating of different tasks / industries to a greater number of more specialised consultants, in the same way as SAP deployments are done.

The only issue I can think of is the "target market" for each product. Typically only a really large organisation would consider implementing full-blown SAP, and with that come the resources to pay for it to be done properly, as well as the motivation that "near enough is not good enough".Organisations implementing MOSS would range from Small/medium right up to the very large - with only the large really having the resources to "implement it properly" in the way you describe (and I DO believe that the 'functional consultant' route is a fantastic idea for getting it done properly).
I think the distinction should be made between these 2 - for large deployments, I totally agree with what Kristian is saying. Each aspect of the "whole" should be planned and executed independently of one-another (but bearing in mind that which has been done before) and each should be driven by someone of significant expertise in the specific business problem being solved. The actual install / infrastructure side of it should be very separate to the guys doing the config, and the config should be separate to the guys doing the customisation/dev. Mixing of the 2 gives far too much opportunity for corner cutting and therefore problems.

I also think there will always be a need for "generalist" in SharePoint land for those small/medium deployments. The blurring of the lines between to two, and the inclination of organisations to opt for the lower quote will unfortunately tend to put the brakes on any consultancy using a larger number of far more specialised people to achieve what a client sees as the same final solution.

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