I think that setting up a team site is like writing a novel. There are planners and there are, well, not planners. A friend of mine who was struggling to write her first novel was a non-planner. She could not get her book finished. She had written the beginnings of several nice novels. She had not written any middles or endings. That is, until she decided to plan her novel sections in an Excel spreadsheet. I was amazed at how she whipped through chapter after chapter once she’d developed her plan. She told me it was easy, because she’d planned each chapter on a spreadsheet, and all she had to do was open it up and follow her own directions as to what to write that day.
I’ve also read interviews with J.K. Rowling that said she had known exactly how her Harry Potter series would end when she began her first novel in the series. And that ended up working for her.
I’m sure that, even with a good overall idea of where they were going, both authors did a fair bit of playing around, rewriting scenes and changing characters around.
So the trick is not to get overwhelmed with planning your site down to every last detail (since SharePoint is easy enough to modify) but, to keep things simple for everyone, have a plan.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a dedicated information architect to design the site for you. Most likely, you won’t have this though. You will either be acting as the information architect yourself, working with your IT manager, or working in a team to brainstorm and come up with the best way to design your site.
SharePoint comes with some basic templates to get you started. Before you even look at the templates, I recommend that you think about what you want the site to do for you and/or your team.
I’m including some resources at the end of this post to help you dig deeper into Web site planning.
Basic planning guidelines:
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List the types of content and interaction that you currently use - create a content inventory
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List what isn’t working for you now and get feedback from all the users of your intranet.
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Interview potential site users to find out what would help them in their jobs – do they need a better way to pull together presentations or help finding HR information?
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Identify your audiences – you’ll most likely need multiple sites that interconnect
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Develop a plan by first writing a gap analysis -- what is missing between what you have now and what you want to have?
This will begin to build the picture of what you need on your site.
Here are some additional resources that will help you plan your intranet site:
1. Determine the information architecture for your site
Excellent series of articles on TechNet about planning a MOSS 2007 site. One of the best resources I found.
2. Plan Your Web site
This article was written for Publisher 2003, but it has some basic guidelines and questions to ask that will help you design your site. Best for a small company.
3. Communicating Design by Dan Brown.
A book written for professional content strategists and site developers
4. Create a site
Article about building a SharePoint site from Office Online.