Earlier this year I wrote a post about the SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) programme from Microsoft. This is a way for customers who already have an investment in Microsoft Software to obtain some consultancy days (for no extra cost) to plan to better use Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
If you follow my Charteris blog you will have seen that I recently attended a week’s course to prepare for the arrival of the next version of the product, SharePoint 2010, through the Microsoft Ignite Program which prepares Microsoft Partner organisations for new products.
Hot on the heels of this came a recent briefing session where Microsoft prepared us as SDPS partners for a new offering which is aimed at assisting customers to plan for an upgrade of their existing SharePoint investment from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning is similar in many ways to the core SharePoint Deployment Planning service, but different in other ways.
Like the other SDPS Offerings, SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning comes in different lengths (1,3,5,10 or 15 days) to explore to different depths how you might plan for an upgrade to 2010. And like the other SDPS offerings, it includes an Architectural Design Session, Strategy Briefing Session, Feature overview and labs according to the number of days. And finally, like the others it includes a short list of mandatory deliverables that I and other SDPS consultants have to produce as an output.
But there are also subtle differences in the delivery that perhaps impact us as consultants more than customers. For one thing, SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning is a different pitch to our audience. We are no longer trying to help a customer to consider SharePoint from scratch, as the starting reference for this offering is that they already use MOSS 2007. For the engagement this means that our stakeholder community is wider, as it is important to involve those who have established an operational interest in the day to day workings of SharePoint. And instead of exploring a completely new idea we have to make sure that what is already being used extensively is preserved correctly and improved upon by upgrading to a new product. This also means from a delivery perspective as consultants that we explore the impact of the change to the proper depth and explore the plan to the proper level of detail as is entirely appropriate for any upgrade of an operational system. And although SDPS has always been about planning, in the immediate short term we have to remember that SharePoint 2010 is not a released product and implementation on the beta is not supported by Microsoft.
Although SharePoint 2010 Upgrade Planning changes the mix slightly of SDPS, I am very pleased that Microsoft have added this offering to the bundle as it offers customers who are already committed to SharePoint the opportunity to draw on a pool of consultants who can assist with planning work. And the SDPS format allows this assistance to range from a “heads-up” type briefing session all the way through to actually trying a pilot upgrade with an existing site. And of course if you are considering such an upgrade please get in touch to discuss how we can help with this process.