What is SharePoint's Intended Use?
In a recent presentation, Bill English, CEO of Mindsharp, puts forth a good rule for SharePoint, "Don't use SharePoint outside of its intended use."
English elaborates that SharePoint is not software for accounting, customer relationship management, managing risk, enterprise planning or process automation. But he's seen developers try to make it perform these functions time and again.
Can SharePoint be modified to do these things? Of course it can. With enough time and effort, a tool can be modified to do any number of things. But it's a complete waste of time.
So what is SharePoint's intended use? English breaks it down into five words.
1. Collaboration - makes it easier for team members to work together
2. Aggregation - makes it easier to collect data and files in one area
3. Organization - makes it easier to order collected data so it can be found
4. Presentation - makes it easier for data to be presented in meaningful ways
5. Publication - makes it easier to create new files using assembled data
He argues all the features in SharePoint 2010 can be tied back to any of these five words. It's a compelling argument.
Watch the full video for his complete presentation. This portion of the lecture can be found between minutes 8:14 and 11:43.
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