Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for SharePoint Infrastructure

Brian LalancetteNavantis Inc.

March 9, 2015

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They Thought They Were Ready To Install SharePoint. What Happened Next Left Them Shocked And Speechless!

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Who Am I?

Consultant at www.navantis.com

SharePoint infrastructure specialist

PowerShell nerd

AutoSPInstaller

AutoSPSourceBuilder

Lazy admin

Even lazier blogger

*New*! Stroke survivor!

Audience Poll

Quick poll

Business Users

Power Users

Admins

Developers

Executives

*It’s OK to vote more than once

(i.e. admit to being more than one)

Background

Background

Business, Schmusiness!

Why gather requirements?

Build something that actually fits *

Save money; spend wisely on areas that count

Focus on purpose

Opens the conversation between stakeholders and IT

First Things Last

“Where does it hurt?”

What business problem are we trying to solve?

What gap are we trying to fill?

Learn a bit about the nature of the business *

Common Pitfalls

Where does I.T. hurt?

But tech is cool! Implement it for its own sake!

“We’d rather not involve the business” *‒ (Customer have actually told me this)

Cart before the proverbial horse‒ IT department makes the call on what tools to use Who’s serving whom?

‒ Business users feel the pain of either: Bleeding edge technology

Legacy, out-of-date platforms

Sample Questionnaire

Sample Questionnaire

Overall approach

Gauge your audience‒ Technical?

‒ Decision Makers?

‒ Power Users

‒ End Users (wait, what?)

“Zoom in/out” as required *

Ultimately geared toward helping to make infrastructure decisions

Assumes this is on-premises

Sample Questionnaire

Questions

Type of site (Intra/Extra/Inter) Number of employees

‒ Number of SharePoint users (& growth rate!)‒ Concurrency rate (more on this later)

Where are your employees/users? * Employee/user privilege model

‒ Open by default vs. closed by default

Will they be working with large files? * Usage patterns:

‒ Collaboration / Consumption / Mix (ratio)

Sample Questionnaire (continued)

More questions Services & service apps for SharePoint *

‒ Business Data Connectivity‒ Managed Metadata‒ Office Web Apps‒ Visio Graphics Service‒ “We want it all” Oh really now…

My Sites / Personal Sites‒ Fear & Confusion Governance Capacity Planning State of Active Directory? Who gets personal sites?

Sample Questionnaire (continued)

Even more questions

Uptime & Availability

‒ How long can business tolerate a service outage?

‒ At what times (if at all) can they tolerate outages?

‒ Can they stand to lose any data? How many hours’ worth? *

BUT

‒ As downtime approaches zero, cost approaches infinity

‒ Therefore balance a reasonable expectation of uptime with customer’s budget

Sample Questionnaire (continued)

“Great, but we’re just upgrading…”

Not “just” upgrading *

Take this opportunity to review prior requirements (if they had even been identified/considered)

DB attach, or manual/automated migration? Size of databases Custom and/or non-upgradeable solutions

Move your clutter vs. opportunity to start fresh(er)

Sample Questionnaire (continued)

Broader organizational concerns

Risk Tolerance

Desire for Innovation / Platform Currency

Data Retention Requirements

Additional Considerations

Thoughts on Concurrency

Concurrency is everything! MS likes to use “total number of users”

‒ However it’s kind of meaningless as-is… *

‒ Concurrency is usually expressed as a percentage• Average number of user sessions at a particular time

‒ 10% as a rule of thumb (Intranets)

‒ Internet (public-facing) concurrency much tougher to nail down

‒ Do we anticipate peak periods of abnormally high concurrency?

Farm Sizing

Farm size & capacity

Implications of a farm that’s too small‒ Poor performance

‒ Running out of space

‒ Lots of warnings in CA that tend to be ignored

Implications of a farm that’s too big‒ Staff required to operate and monitor

‒ Patching (downtime, costs, overtime) x number of servers

‒ Complexity outweights benefits

Mitigation Strategy

But what if…

IT has already made some of the decisions (prior to your involvement)?

Corporate culture or policy makes it unfeasible to interview business representatives?

You’ve exhausted all avenues?

Mitigation Strategy (continued)

Plan for:

Future growth‒ Monitor performance & load proactively

Scalability‒ Virtualization‒ Storage capacity (SANs, dynamically-expanding VHDX etc.)‒ Farm topologies‒ Be ready with tools, scripts etc. that will allow you to scale out the farm

Staff readiness‒ Training *‒ Leave-behind materials

Summary

Summary

Business is the reason we’re in business

If you can’t think of a business case for implementing x, why are you doing it?

Think about the goals & purpose behind SharePoint farm size & design (and cost)

Final Thoughts

Don’t…

Q & A

Questions?

Contact Links & References

More reading & contact info

Twitter: @brianlala

Blog: http://spinsiders.com/brianlala

Blog: http://blog.navantis.com/author/brianlalancette

Some guest posts:

‒ http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/02/01/weekend-scripter-using-autospinstaller-and-autospsourcebuilder.aspx

‒ http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/03/23/hey-scripting-guy-march-23-2010.aspx

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