4 Tips From SharePoint That Helped Me Complete My First Triathlon

So what do Triathlons and SharePoint have in common? A lot. This past weekend I just completed my first and only Tri, it was an Olympic distance. Swimming was my absolute weakness, cycling turned out to be my strength. Strangely enough, while swimming for an hour in the open ocean amongst waves and thoughts of dying, I began thinking of all the challenges I have had over the years managing SharePoint. Thoughts of governance, or lack thereof, patching servers, planning and various emergencies I’ve had to deal with over the years. Below is a list of how managing SharePoint helped me finish my triathlon:

Know your enemy

From the Tri: In this case my enemy was swimming I knew very little about proper swimming technique so I read up on it and talked to experts.

Into SharePoint: If you’re tasked with managing a SharePoint environment and most likely you are coming from either a Development, DBA or completely different background, then you’d better learn about what you’re being asked to manage. Too many times I see someone thrown into the SharePoint administration fire with little to no training. You can still be successful especially since SharePoint has been around for 15 years there are TONS of resources and experts on it. Use them!

Identify your weaknesses

From the Tri: My weakness was obviously swimming. Once I identified that, I zeroed in on what was wrong with my swimming and how to improve. Everything was wrong, technique, endurance, fear of open water…to name a few.

Into SharePoint: Your business is the same way, you need to identify your business users’ ‘weaknesses’ aka business gaps, then you can zero in on how SharePoint can help fill those gaps. Interviewing your business users is critical. You’d be surprised to find out how many users are still sending each other email attachments in lieu of a SharePoint workflow. Or users that are still passing around Excel files instead of using Excel Services. Making your users more productive with SharePoint should be your end goal!

Use the right tools

From the Tri: About 300 yards into my swim, my wetsuit came unzipped. I had a volunteer zip it up, but it came unzipped again! I could feel my suit filling up with water, I was basically a floating balloon man. I had no choice but to go forward, but HAD I done research and bought a new, awesome streamlined wetsuit that actually stayed zipped instead of using an ancient hand-me-down, I may have done a lot better on the swim.

Into SharePoint: If you have complex site structures and are planning on migrating to a new version of SharePoint/SharePoint Online, use a 3rd party tool. If you are planning on deploying SharePoint to multiple farms investigate using Powershell DSC (Desired State Configuration). Use the best tools for what you are trying to do!

Don’t give up

From the Tri: I was the last one in for the swim. When I saw that no one else was swimming with me and the lifeguards were following me I was very tempted to ask them to let me jump on their jet ski and take me back to shore.

Into SharePoint: Those were the same thoughts I had about SharePoint about a year into managing my first farm. It is a monstrous product and can be very intimidating. So don’t try and learn all of it at once. Let your users guide you as to which areas you need to go deep.