Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the fundamental principles of business.  Any  business contemplating enterprise initiatives attempts to clearly see and understand the ROI. The use of ROI is no different for consultants as new projects, employees and business expansions must all be able to deliver a financial return on the cost of the investment whether that investment is money, time or some other resource.

One of the most fundamental ways we as consultants create a strong ROI is by investing our time into other employees during their initial time on a project.  Though called many things – ‘onboarding', ‘ramping up’, etc – I’ll refer to this process as ‘level setting’ as the main goal is to bring new project members to the same level as the team.  When given the attention it deserves, level setting creates a ripe environment for successful project delivery.

I’ve recently completed a white paper that details a methodology employed by CapTech to deliver a SharePoint 2010 collaboration portal for an international client.  Blending Agile and Waterfall practices, CapTech delivered successfully thanks to a variety of benefits afforded to the client and CapTech by the methodology (dubbed CT Hybrid).  The full white paper is attached to this post, but here’s a sneak preview of its Conclusion:

To read the previous entry in this blog series, click here.

So it's time to roll up the sleeves and make things happen: your move/migration is real.  And these boxes/files/images won't move themselves.

To read the previous entry in this blog series, click here.

You’ve strategized.  You’ve inventoried.  You’ve cleaned up.  It’s time to answer the pivotal question: how are we going to get this stuff from here to there?  If the move in question is from your college apartment to your parents’ basement, the family minivan might be all you need (and all you can afford).  But if you’re moving from a multi-floor penthouse in Manhattan to a beachfront palace in the Hamptons, the challenge is entirely different.  Similarly, the size, complexity, and available resources associated with a content migration effort will drive the approach definition process, which at its essence involves defining the degree to which the execution of the migration will be automated. 

While trying to address the perennial SCRUM-versus-waterfall question by researching project success rates, I came upon an interesting article in Dr. Dobb's Journal.  After surveying over 300 project management practitioners with expertise in both Agile and traditional methodologies, the Journal was able to quantify success for 71% of Agile projects and 61% “traditional” projects.  Whether this implies that self-organization effectively mitigates at least some risks, or that Agile projects are more disciplined than is commonly perceived, remains open to interpretation [more on this in my next blog entry], but even more interesting were the trends about workplace health, as documented almost as an afterthought on the survey’s periphery^[1].

To read the previous entry in this blog series, click here.

Of all the moments that make you anxious for the moving process to come to an end, my least favorite might be those that include the following sentiment:  “Why in the world didn’t we just throw/give that away?”  Every occasion in which I opened a box and that thought came to mind corresponded to a case of unnecessary effort, unjustified cost, and unwanted frustration.  Avoiding similar moments for business users should be a goal of content migration.

To read the previous entry in this blog series, click here.

If, a week before moving out of my old house, someone had asked me to list off the top of my head every item that would be loaded onto the truck, and then asked me to reproduce that list a week after we moved in, my guess is the two lists would have varied from each other by 50% and even more than that from reality.  Fortunately, my moving company painstakingly compiled page upon page of inventory, categorized by box where necessary, and assigned each item a unique identifier.  This same inventory was then used by the move-in team to validate that all of our belongings had made it to the other end.  Had such an inventory not been developed, I would have been forced to decide if I was willing to sign off on delivery having only eyeballed an overwhelming volume and variety of stuff, nearly all of it s

To read the introduction to this blog series, click... Content Migration for Enterprise Portals: Almost as much fun as moving

“How much stuff do we have?  How should we estimate that?”

“Should we just get a U-Haul and move ourselves, or do we need a professional carrier?”

 “How long will it be between boxing up our belongings and being able to unpack them?  What do we need access to during that period?”

These are just a few of the many questions that must be answered as you decide how to execute a move.  Each has a parallel encountered during the initial stages of content migration planning.

I recently lived the joy of a multi-step interstate move that included professional packing, multiple trucks, and a month of storage between moving out and moving in.  As my wife and I continue to wade through the remnants of unpacking, I’ve taken some time to look back and contemplate what we might have done differently to make it a more pleasant and efficient process.  (NB:  Our movers, Hilldrup Moving & Storage, were excellent and I highly recommend them.  Even still, I doubt many will argue with this universal point: moving stinks.)  While pondering the lessons we learned, it dawned on me how the moving process can serve as a useful analogy for a similarly intimidating challenge in the enterprise portal realm: content migration.