Ferrari: a Point to Share

What's the point of having a great system if you're not allowed to use it. Here's my take on it.

What ?!??!

A Ferrari going 10 miles an hour on 3 wheels, while listening to your favorite music on the latest iPod-Nano, plugged into universal media connector. What ?!?!!???

My birthday

I was going to be 18, and was ecstatic to learn that my mom and dad had bought me a Ferrari. No, not a matchbox type (that would really ruin this story), but a real one (yellow if you care to know). Didn’t believe it at first, thought I was dreaming. But I wasn’t….  So I called all my friends to take her for a spin….

feRRaRi

The motor puRRed……Nice!!!!!! A gentle start…. 2 Mph, 5 Mph, 7 Mph….. really getting the hang of it now…. 10 Mph… 10 Mph… 10 Mph…. terrible scraping noise…. and sitting crooked to boot.

Ok, so there’s clearly something wrong here. I already thought something fishy was going on when I spotted only 3 wheels; but not being able to go faster than 10Mph in a Ferrari?!??!? Surely the machine must be broken. Techno-savvy as I am I assumed a reboot was needed, so I stopped the car, got out (that’s important, as otherwise the sensors might think you’re still driving, and thus failing on the reboot) , got back in (equally important, as otherwise driving gets really difficult, esp. seeing as my dad had removed the remote control for safety reasons), started the car again, and of we went… at a whopping 10 Mph.

My dad; Gotta love this guy

So what happened? Being conscientious as he is, he had decided to limit to speed of my brand-new-all-out-honest-to-god Ferrari. For two reasons: environment and safety. Furthermore, he had removed one wheel so that he could save on the cost of this fantastic machine.

My Ferrari being a Share Point

Having gotten to grips with the situation, we decided to talk about all this in my new car (or what’s left of it). I mean, what else could I use it for, other than having a cup of coffee and collaborate on possible changes that would render the machine somewhat useful (or at least a bit less useless). Funny though, my dad had a UMC specially fitted. One in the front and one in the back. If was perfect for my Nano, giving us some really nice background music. Not to mention the coffee-maker stuck on the ceiling…

Back to business

If you believed the story above to be true, then this story really is for you. You see, the above actually does happen on a regular basis. Not with Ferrari’s I’d have to admit, but with the Ferrari amongst Web-Portal-Collaboration-Software called SharePoint.

Companies go all out buying this rather expensive piece of tooling, and then strip it down, because they don’t trust the users to behave. So where the tooling is designed to allow end-users to interact with, and setup new web-sites and pages, companies try to remove the options for fear of “web-site proliferation”. Unwarranted fear in my mind. True, when given the rights, end-users will experiment and create new sites. But isn’t that the whole idea? Isn’t that why you bought SharePoint… so that new sites can be easily created. And who knows better what they want from a new site then the actual user?

Instead, a small group of individuals has been tasked with deciding what users want, and create the sites for them (including some fancy shmancy functionality no one really needs); invariably resulting in sites that are painfully underused. An embarrassment even. Is the truth hurting already? Are you feeling the pain I deliver?

And why the fear? Take the following scenario:

Project teams have a need to collaborate. The team-lead or project-lead gets accredited with the rights to create project sites.
Now how many project-sites is he going to create? One, five, one hundred? I dare bet that (s)he will create a maximum of five project sites. No more…

“But” you say “what if he creates 25; and all his friends as well”. Here’s the parry: have administrators monitor the amount of sites per user. Should this fall above a threshold, then issue a warning. Does the culprit not listen? Then remove the rights to create sites. Now this is time and money well spent; and proliferation will soon die out, I assure you.

Educate

The point I’m trying to make is that it seems much wiser to not cripple the tooling you spent so much money on (and the action of crippling typically costs way more than the initial outlay), but instead educate people in the proper usage of your great piece of software. Use it to its full potential, and give end-users what they really want (not what you believe they should want), by giving them freedom and flexibility. Sure, provide them with extras, shortcuts, easy to use modules, and perhaps fix the branding. By all means, help them along by setting up an initial site for them. But do not limit the potential.

Don’t give your employees a 3-wheeled Ferrari doing a max of 10Mph, out of pure fear. Instead give them the Ferrari you can afford, and teach them how to drive and use it safely and properly. Keep an eye on them, and let them know when they cross the line. Revoke their license if they don’t listen. But please don’t punish the good citizens by limiting functionality. Punish the culprits instead by revoking their license….. 

Don't be like my dad.