Microsoft SharePoint

In a previous job, I was a Project Manager, and one of my assignments was to try to implement Microsoft SharePoint... more specifically, to convince people to use it for things that they already had non-Sharepoint methods for. Needless to say, I learned a lot, but the job was kind of pointless because I didn't have any authority or resources.

Fast-forward to the future, and I'm working in at a huge organization that has implemented SharePoint, but calls it something else. I made the mistake of demonstrating my knowledge, and now I get lots of random questions, sometimes from random people, that have questions like, "can I do this?" and "can you do this?".

Today, I got a "can I do this?" question, and for some reason, I wanted to post about it. I like answering these questions. The person who asks is always pleasant. The "can you do this?" questions are usually masks for "do this because I don't want to learn how, but I want credit for it." and those kind of suck... a lot.

More to the point, SharePoint is something that Microsoft got right, at least after several iterations. The harder barrier seems to be to convince people that they should put their files in a "website" rather than a spreadsheet on a network drive, and that they can actually drive more functionality by utilizing SharePoint than maintaining 50 spreadsheets.

WWJD? Yea, verily, I say unto you, "Stop using Excel and the network drives." Too bad that's not in the Bible, or even that most of the people in this organizations wouldn't care if it were. They cling to those spreadsheets and network drives like they mean something. I guess in a sense, they do. Lots of people's jobs are based entirely on managing spreadsheets and updating them on shared network drives, and they aren't exactly looking to do their jobs differently. More likely, they see a mandate like that as a threat to their jobs.

No wonder the job of that mandate gets pushed down so far... Nobody's interested in putting themselves out of work these days. I wonder what's up with my colleague who asks me questions, and seems at least eager to learn, or ask me if I have any tips on how to do something she's been asked for.

Oh well, on to my work.