Comments on: Sharepoint and KM: In Search of the KM Particle

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:25:17 +0000

Peter – software development 101. SOLUTIONS = people, process and technology. If you are missing one you do not have a solution.

“collaboration, portal, search, content management, business focus, and business intelligence.” – this is a sales pitch not a solution

The biggest failure of software solutions is that people focus on the technology first. Or they think that using technology will somehow make the problem go away.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is what is the business problem you are trying to solve. And then get more detailed (read use case survey)

By: Bev. Graham

Bev. Graham — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:05:00 +0000

I wonder if anyone has been talking about the collaborative features in other document management systems? I was at the meeting on the EDRMS road map on Monday – what I heard there and what I have heard in other places with AEP is that future directions for P8 will/should include collaborative features. Are we exploring those? My understanding is that Sharepoint is, simply, another tool. What are we doing about the tool we have? OR is Sharepoint such a strong example that we can extrapolate?

By: Peter Zakrzewski

Peter Zakrzewski — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 01:10:46 +0000

Just wanted to drop a quick note regarding the “Email is dead” comment. I posed the question of whether or not email is dead or dying to Tony Byrne from CMSWatch after his presentation “Managing the Message Mountain”. Tony’s response was a flat out “No”. According to Tony, despite the digital generation’s move away from email in their personal digital lives, the moment they step into the workforce they soon realize that email is the prominent mode of virtual communication.

My take on that is that the digital generation has realized the shortcomings of email and has turned to other available digital mediums of communicating with one another. The only question is, when will organizations learn what the digital generation already knows to be true?

By: Dale Arseneault

Dale Arseneault — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:02:13 +0000

On the “email is dead” comment, in some respects I certainly hope so. eMail has it’s place, but is being used for way too many purposes that it was never intended for – e.g. many-to-many conversations for decision making and problem solving.

Having alternatives that enable more effective coordination and collaboration will be an enabler for more effective knowledge work – provided that in so doing,these alternatives are well integrated and relatively seamless – and do not become technology silos of themselves. It’s fine for individuals to have multiple accounts on delicious, slideshare, wordpress, librarything, PBwiki, youtube, myspace, bubble.us, flikr etc. but let’s hope users in the enterprise do not have to deal with multiple logins, multiple user interfaces etc. yikes!

By: Dale Arseneault

Dale Arseneault — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:56:16 +0000

Nice post Peter. I detect a bit of the “writer” in you looking for expression opportunities..

As always, success is about people, and not about tools, so much attention needs to be paid to motivations, practices, process, principles and capabilities. In the APQC Emerging Technolgies best practices study knowledge transfer session it was clear from many of the particpants who had implemented Sharepoint that success was directly related to the amount of time spent in advance configuring the user experience to enable Sharepoint as a tool, and not a barrier. Common perspective is that Sharepoint is not an “out of the box” solution. And from what I heard, the amount of that investment was very, very significant.