Thomas Vanderwal just posted his long awaited commentary on Microsoft Sharepoint. It is an intriguing and insightful reporting of what Sharepoint users have reported to him over the past couple of years. In a nutshell, Thomas’s final commentary is that Sharepoint does some things well, just don’t call it social software. In his own words:

SharePoint does some things rather well, but it is not a great tool (or even passable tool) for broad social interaction inside enterprise related to the focus of Enterprise 2.0. SharePoint works well for organization prescribed groups that live in hierarchies and are focused on strict processes and defined sign-offs. Most organization have a need for a tool that does what SharePoint does well.

The post prompted a rebuttal from Bil Simser. Bil’s main counterpoint is built around the idea that though Sharepoint is not excellent in all areas, it does integrate all of its functions, which is a plus. In his words:

SharePoint is a lot of things and like a lot of “suites” it does a lot of things pretty good. Some pretty good, some great, some not so great.

Bil goes on to discuss how a best of breed approach only shifts time and expense over to the integration side as opposed to initial development of an overall enterprise system.

Focus on Requirements Definition

The underlying thread in both of these posts is that understanding and delivering user needs and requirements is paramount in delivery of any system. For any organization to begin a conversation about what information technology it needs with a discussion of the technology itself is a recipe for failure. The discussion of solutions must begin with a clear definition of business objectives. The discussion of technology should be the last link in the chain of conversations.

Maybe Hugh says it best: