I am, as we speak, near the end of a 2-year long odyssey of migration to Microsoft Sharepoint. It has been at times frustrating, irritating, and downright unsavory. The big question for me at this point is whether or not the whole exercise was worth it.
This is my first migration, and it has been a doozy. We very clearly needed to get off the platform we’re on (Oracle of some ancient vintage), but I still feel conflicted about the choice of Sharepoint as a replacement. Microsoft is everywhere, that we know. Integrating another Msoft piece into a fully Windows shop is, at least in theory, a fairly straightforward process. And yet. And yet…
At the best of times a migration is a deeply miserable experience. Hardware and infrastructure upgrades happening in parallel with software upgrades happening in parallel with the migration of tens of thousands of pieces of data happening in parallel with new features being developed. Oh, and you have to keep the old site running in the meantime, and the boss or the boss’ boss is breathing down your neck asking why it’s taking so long and costing so much. At the end of it you’re too exhausted and sick of the stupid project to even appreciate the fancy new site and (hopefully) the applause and acclaim from around the organization.
This migration hasn’t been quite that simple or smooth. I’ve heard “that’s not out of the box” so many times I’m hearing it in my sleep. I’ve repeated ad nauseum the required function of an entire series of links to multimedia that were, in end, still done wrong and I had to fix them myself. I’ve sent and re-sent the mockups of the design so many times I think they’ve dedicated an Exchange server just for those emails. And the move from development to staging (not even production!) has happened “for the last time” at least four times.
Again, I don’t think this is out of the ordinary – it just is what it is. But Sharepoint itself is worrying me. Out of the box webparts aren’t doing as promised, and so we have to replace them with custom or third-party webparts. Stuff that’s just supposed to work isn’t working; managing content is more complicated than we were promised. It is by no means a content management system, and I think we were sold on it as a CMS.
In the end, there’s nothing to do but make do with a decision made at higher levels. I think Sharepoint is a powerful tool, and the collaborative elements of it will prove in the end to be the most valuable parts. But I can’t help worrying about what we don’t know about it yet. I already feel that the tool and the project were not as advertised, and it’s the sort of thing that makes me nervous. Look for updates if I survive long enough to make it to go-live.
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