What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

In the TechNet forums there is a thread that got off topic and somehow came to this question. "What makes a good SharePoint consultant?"

Since I felt the answer to the question and the tone of the conversation were so off base I started to write a reply. I also had another well respected SharePoint consultant tell me they thought someone should bring some clarity to the thread. Well, after beating up my keyboard for several minutes I thought I would take my reply to my private little soap box, my blog. So here goes.

The basic concept of the thread is that a good SharePoint consultant would need to know a bunch of administrator stuff. Active Directory, SQL,  Windows Server, etc. Interesting idea I guess? Joel Oleson does a thorough job of laying it all out in the SharePoint Architect Skill Set post.

 

The big issue I see with this all being advertised as what you should be looking for in a "Good SharePoint Consultant" is I don't think any of this is as nearly important as the "Soft Side" of SharePoint. There is no mention of the key things like Usability?  Design?  Taxonomy?  Planning?  Rollouts? Search? Branding? Custom apps? Business analysis? User adoption? Discovery?  Etc. These are the things that will decide if you have a successful deployment or not. Poorly setup hardware can cause you issues but can be fixed by someone like myself in hours. A poor taxonomy can take 6 months and a complete redesign to fix.

    

I got into SharePoint as the guy who knew all of the server stuff.  I was an MCSE and all of that jazz.  Guess what?  For most SharePoint projects I was useful for about 2 days.  Once the hardware was built and rock solid I went home and the real work was begun by the "good SharePoint Consultants".  I have since spent a great deal of effort learning the "human" side of SharePoint.  That is the hard part.  I can teach anyone to install the software in a couple of hours. If you give me a couple of days I can teach you to make it rock solid.  But then what?  You need content.  That is where you get into the black arts that are portal planning and design.  That is the hard part.  Once you design what needs to be built in SharePoint you are back to the easy stuff.  Clicky, clicky and the thing is deployed. One project I am on we are paying a high school kid to build it and bring in the data. He just follows the directions we laid out. And it only took 3 months and a couple of dozen meetings with a few hundred decisions to get to that. ;) Of course that is just phase one.

 

<RANT> Now here comes the part that annoys me the most. If you don't know most everything SharePoint can do out of box then don't speak to another customer until you do! Seriously! I can't tell you what percentage of my business is cleaning up other so called "consultants" but it is a big part. People who walk in the door with their army of .NET developers and start building the functionality the customer is asking for. This would be great except for one small detail. 9 times out of 10 what they are building is already included out of the box. Do you know how many times I see things that are the content query web part recreated? Or they wrote custom navigation because they couldn't figure out how to use the one that comes with SharePoint? It drives me bonkers. They hard wire in these things and then guess what? You can't upgrade later or the latest service pack breaks something. Why? Because that is your punishment for reinventing the wheel. This may be a great model for the consulting company but really sucks for the customer footing the bill for the never ending cycle of maintenance. <RANT/>

 

Now don't get me wrong not all SharePoint Consultants are evil. There are a lot of very talented ones, some are even developers ;), (I love you guys) but development is not the first answer when it comes to SharePoint. Squeezing as much as you can out of the box is. If I was looking for a SharePoint consultant I would use SharePoint911 they are the best. (Oh yeah, in case you didn't know I own the company. So take that with a grain of salt.)

 

So my questions I would ask a potential SharePoint consultant are:

  • List your last 10 projects? (If more than 5 aren't SharePoint be scared)
  • What was your favorite solution you came up with? (Hopefully something like well we combined the BDC, Forms Server, and a custom workflow. Then we setup a KPI for the data with Excel Services. But any real solution will do.)
  • What is your favorite feature? (This gives you insight into the person. If they don't have an answer RUN.) My answer is search.
  • What type of Taxonomy would you suggest? (Kind of a trick question. If they list one immediately ask them for a second one to make sure they aren't just using buzz words. They should really answer with well it depends. If they say they already paid their taxes RUN)

I welcome comments. Though I fear I may be opening that darn box of Pandora's again. And yes, I really don't hate developers.

 

Shane – SharePoint Consulting

Comments

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:00 PM by Jeremy Thake

I've been writing on a similar path lately too.

My beef is that SharePoint is just so huge and the MCTS certifications put people in two buckets: Administrator or Developer and there is so much more than just that breakdown.

Glad to see you're back to blogging!

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:03 PM by Ann Bui

Several phrases come to mind:

Rock on, Shane!  

Hallelujah!

Can you get an Amen??  AMEN!

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Thursday, May 22, 2008 2:19 AM by Sharon

Well said. A lot of my time is spent going in and clearing up issues created by others. And a bigger portion is now being spent bridging between IT and IM and connecting them back into the biz.

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Thursday, May 22, 2008 2:39 AM by Jan

Shane, I agree totally with what you are writing.

I do not have a technical background, and I thought this would be a major disadvantage when working with SharePoint, but more and more I realize this can be an advantage. Your post confirms this.

Thanks for sharing your ideas and taking the risk of opening Pandora's box ;-)

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Thursday, May 22, 2008 7:22 AM by Harish

I am sales guy selling MS related Software Services (Including MOSS), I was truly inrigued by the comments made in your posting. While my technical understanding of SharePoint in itself is limited, I was surprised to see the emphasis that you seem to lay on the MOSS' 'Out Of Box' (OOB)capabilities. Even though I might sound naive I would still want to ask you, why seem to be so convinced with these supposed capabilites and could you also tell me how well is the OOB features to corporate intranets (from a direct fit perspective)?  

# Dew Drop - May 22, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:26 AM by Dew Drop - May 22, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

Pingback from  Dew Drop - May 22, 2008 | Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:51 AM by Mark Miller

Shane - I couldn't agree more with your main point: the functionality out of the box with SharePoint is so vast, it's a shame that most implementations don't start there before they unleash the developers.

As a rule of thumb, I tell clients that they should anticipate a three to six month period of OOTB use before even considering custom development.

Good starting point for discussion.

Regards,

Mark

EndUserSharePoint.com

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Thursday, May 22, 2008 11:51 AM by symon garfield

Try the question; "What is SharePoint?"

My prefered answer is, "SharePoint is Microsoft's market leading Information Worker Platform"

This obviously requires a follow up conversation on the subject of what is an Information Worker platform and why do I need one.

S:)

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Friday, May 23, 2008 1:42 PM by Arné

I myself have come from a very disperse range of technologies and finally I'm now moving into the Sharepoint space, I've dealt alot with dealing with clients, and must say, I've spent 4 months just researching and playing with Sharepoint and it is still too big and very complex and sometimes so easy to get your end results.

I reckon Sharepoint is not all about the technical side, but how you put all the pieces together to get the tight lid on.

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Saturday, May 24, 2008 10:30 PM by Chandima

Great post Shane! I could not agree with you more on solution providers who over complicate by trying add "extra" functionality to SharePoint when you can simply do so much more out of the box.

# SharePoint News! 05/08

Monday, May 26, 2008 1:10 PM by Mirrored Blogs

1 - SharePoint y Web2.0, el entorno Social Networking y demas, muchas veces no son 100% implementables

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Monday, May 26, 2008 2:21 PM by Peter Seale

Where would you go to master the human aspects, besides jumping onto 10 projects? Is there a book you'd recommend? Or are we stuck with the "10 projects" requirement?

I'd love to hear more on that topic.

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 9:19 AM by Mo Omar

You rock man! Thank you so much for opening up this topic, it was definitely needed.

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Friday, June 06, 2008 5:40 AM by Akashya

You are write boss,

Skill required is more then just a fancy terminologies.

Thank you

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Saturday, June 21, 2008 8:07 PM by Mike Houston

Great post!  I couldn't agree more!

# re: What makes a “good” SharePoint consultant?

Wednesday, July 02, 2008 12:31 PM by Adan Brown

List your last 10 projects?

Broker Portal (MOSS): BDC, InfoPath Forms, Forms Auth (Auth Provider), Site Definition.

Change Management System (MOSS): Custom List (some minor changes on DispForm, Add/Edit), Custom Activities Built for SharePoint Designer, SharePoint Designer Workflow, Data Repository

Board Of Directors (WSS 3.0): Standard out-of-the-box "everything" with some nifty XSLT.

Social Intranet with Search: Master Page redesign, User Control Delegation, Content Sources

Reporting Site (MOSS): Excel Services, KPI, Custom List

New Hire Process (MOSS): InfoPath, Custom List, Custom Workflow, Proper SharePoint groups and AD

----- Ten is too many, but I do have 5 more :) ----

What was your favorite solution you came up with? Funny, the shortest one to deliver - Reporting Site: 4 hours of work!! Such a change for the client.

What is your favorite feature? SharePoint Designer for Workflows (I am process oriented)

What type of Taxonomy would you suggest? Your comment is interesting, my answer is that Taxonomy is an organized reflection of the Business environment. The white papers on this from an Information Architecture/Logical Architecture/ and/or Deployment and Planning - are just the tip of the iceberg.

A Developer :)

(Owner of Intuitive Dynamics - two grains of salt!)

Leave a Comment

(required) 
(required) 
(optional)
(required)