How to do you measure the maturity of a SharePoint implementation?

So your organization is thinking about taking the leap, or already has, into launching SharePoint.  When you started on this adventure you treated this as a project, right?  Or did you just turn it on and send out an email stating, “SharePoint is now available”.

If you don’t treat it as a project you are headed for an early disaster and users won’t want to use it. 

Five most common mistakes when rolling out SharePoint:

1. Lack of proper planning

2. Showcasing Features; not building solutions

3. Undefined business case

4. Poor understanding of SharePoint

5. Unrealistic Staffing

The key to adoption of SharePoint is to start out small with one department and bring in those team members that are typically the early adopters.  As you build up the first site you will also need to build your training documents and start to train the people that will use the site.  Then you need to continue training, re-training, start to add articles to your company’s newsletter or blog about SharePoint and finally if it is a requirement to move away from the old paper way, monitor your staff to make sure they made the switch.

Once you get to the point that your company is making the switch over to SharePoint we need some metrics to determine how SharePoint is maturing within your organization.  About a year ago some of the big name advocates of SharePoint started this discussion.  And recently Sadie Van Buren has been giving talks about how she determines the maturity of a SharePoint system in an organization.  Below is her template to determine the maturity of a SharePoint system.

And here is her presentation that shows some examples of 100 and 500 level SharePoint sites, and she also gives an overview of each area and what she thinks is a 100-500 level of maturity. 

The SharePoint Maturity Model - as presented 1 March 2011 for Nothing But SharePoint

View more presentations from Sadalit Van Buren

Also, recently Dux Raymond Sy brought together 4 SharePoint advocates (including Sadie) to discuss “Understanding the SharePoint Maturity Model” 

SPBizChat Ep2: Understanding SharePoint Maturity Model from Dux Raymond Sy on Vimeo.

In my own organization I’ve seen our SharePoint sites go from only a couple hundred clicks a month to now over 130,000 clicks per month.  That is a pretty impressive jump and we are only at about the 300 level of maturity. 

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."  -  Alvin Toffler

 

Captain Kirk reviews his ship's status on a dashboard made in SharePoint