There are a lot of books on SharePoint and I certainly would not want to buy a collection just to view the range of SharePoint solutions. This book is perfect. It covers infrastructure, administrator, superuser and end user perspectives.... This is a 'must have' as a SharePoint reference book.
Too many software books merely describe screens, functions, and how to enter information / click buttons. They never get to the important part of "What can I accomplish by using this function, and which functions should I consider using in the first place?". This book is one of those wonderful, rare ones that focuses on those aspects. It starts with business objectives, which SharePoint functions could potentially support those, and how to plan the implementation. It focuses on the brain work that needs to take place before touching the keyboard for the first time.
Someone stated that this is not a beginner's book. Yes and no. Definitely yes / must-read for a beginner / first time designer or manager who wants to understand what types of problems SharePoint might help solve, and how to go about developing a strategy, governance and implementation plan. No for a first-time user who needs to understand how to create a site and which buttons to click.
I'm not a developer but I am tasked with planning out the SP implementation for my division. We have an admin team to do the heavy lifting on the back end but they are pretty hands off when it comes to planning and roll out. It was difficult to find a book that takes the approach of a planner and gives practical advice and examples of how to go about this process. There are so many things to consider and decisions to make. This book is well organized and makes it easy to map out a plan piece by piece. Each chapter focuses on a different part of the process and the important stuff is reiterated across chapters which I find helpful - particularly because I am not reading it cover to cover but jumping to the pertinent chapters. I also like that the authors do not use a lot of jargon, and if they do, they explain the concepts behind it. Planning out a company-wide SP site is a daunting task for an end user like me and this book has proven to be my best friend through the process. It has been incredibly valuable.
Keep one thing in mind, though. This book is all about PLANNING, not as much DOING. There is not a lot of click here to do this and click there to do that kind of instruction. That part I can figure out. Although the use of screenshots in the book is appropriate.
The first and most important thing to keep in mind about building a SP site is to plan it out thoroughly first!! You really don't want to go in and start building things without a VERY detailed plan. Trust me. Been there! It's all about the plan is this book is a great guide!
This is one of those rare books balancing best practice techniques with what is practical. I have been working with SharePoint since 2001 and this book has helped to reaffirm a lot of what I have been telling clients over the years while offering many new insights in how to plan for and apply governance to a SharePoint installation.
This book is critical for any IT managers or consultants who are planning a SharePoint rollout. Having a solid SharePoint foundation helps to better understand the concepts within this book, beginners may have an uphill battle with it.
I particularly appreciated the sections on:
* Planning Your Security Model
* Information Architecture and Enterprise Content Management
* Making Search Work
This book isn't for developers, it truly is for those who need to communicate how to have a successful SharePoint rollout. As a consultant, this is one of the few books I have gone back to time and time again.
I like this book because it puts emphasis on Information Architecture. I've been installing SharePoint for years. I'm pretty good at designing farms and installing services. I'm already past the stage where I pick what to install, and how to install it. Now I want to know how to build a smart and useful portal. This book is helpful. I got a chance to see Scott Jamison speak at the SharePoint Conference in 2011, and he really got me excited about SharePoint all over again. His writing carries the same enthusiasm.
So I had all the technical how to books, and some of them covered some governance and planning, but I was left wanting more. I hoped this book would fill in the gaps and it did.
The biggest problem I have run into with SharePoint is that there is not enough planning and governance surrounding the use of it. I have been in a lot of environments that started their SharePoint initiatives with a plan that was no more that "Hey why don't we throw SharePoint up and see what it can do". Suddenly those curious individuals are using it to share documents. The word slowly spreads that it is available and more users start using it.
Then one of the more curious power users (by the way, most of the time in my experience `power user' = `dangerous user') start adding more features and they begin to start using more of the web parts and services available.
Next someone realizes you can integrate SharePoint with Reporting Services and they start down the BI road. Before you know it they have a monster on their hands and start looking for someone to clean it up and help manage it, but the cowboys who kicked it all off have moved on!!!!
That story has been the same story for every single SharePoint environment I have come across, and I have come across a lot of them.
I could have summed all that up with the statement "READ THIS BOOK BEFORE IMPLEMENTING A SHAREPOINT ENVIRONMENT", but I wanted to give some context to the importance of understanding how planning and governance can impact your SharePoint environment. It is a beast, especially SharePoint 2010.
The book is broken down into 3 sections. They are Planning, Optimizing, and Migrating. Some of the topics I found really useful where Why Is Governance Planning So Important?, How Do I Create a Governance Plan?, What Is in the Governance Plan?, Site Architecture, Metadata Architecture, Document and Records Management, Overview of SharePoint Security Elements, Defining and Documenting SharePoint Security, and Customizing the User Experience (UX).
I also liked the chapter on Planning for Disaster Recovery: Backing Up and Restoring. We are in the middle of planning that right now and this chapter has some really useful information in it.
To get a feel for the author I would suggest going to the book's overview on the informIT site and reading some of the articles in the extra's area.
I am in the middle of a SharePoint 2007 to 2010 migration. This book is going to come in really handy as we start to put some governance in place around the use of the SharePoint 2010 tools. This does a great job of introducing all the new features available SharePoint 2010.
This book not only outlines what governance should be in place, it also helps you understand why it is so important. That definitely helps when you are in an environment of cowboys who don't like having healthy constraints in place.
All in All I highly recommend this book to anyone involved with the administration, implementation, or the development of SharePoint 2010.
I was a big fan of the authors' Essential SharePoint 2007, and recommended it to my colleagues and clients as a book that really took a business approach to the product and was targeted to the IT Professional, Project Manager, and Business Analyst rather than to developers or server administrators. The 2010 version continues with that point of view. In the authors' own words: "Most books are designed to address the "how" behind SharePoint... this book complements the typical SharePoint book with some of the "what" and "why" of SharePoint." The book's focus on on planning and governance, including such tools as tables of "Mapping of SharePoint Features to General Business Objectives" and "Suggested SharePoint [Success] Metrics," are extremely useful for an IT Director, project leader, or anyone taking a consultative role on a SharePoint implementation.
This is one of the few books on the market, if not the only one, that supports a mature and optimized SharePoint implementation as much as a planfully well-founded one. Part II comprises nearly 200 pages on implementing SharePoint "to its fullest potential." Its sections on Search, Business Process, Business Intelligence, and Composites & Applications relate directly to these competencies in the SharePoint Maturity Model. A SharePoint implentation owner could potentially improve his or her implementation's SharePoint Maturity several levels by reading and applying the informaton here - for example, the section on Search could take an implementation all the way through the 300 level (without any custom development).
In addition to the planning and foundational concepts, there is a good amount of beginner-to-intermediate-level how-to and hands-on which can really empower the business user - for example, how to design a workflow in Visio 2010 that can be imported into SharePoint.
To sum up, it's the perfect book for all those folks in the SharePoint community who DON'T identify themselves as developers or administrators - and it should be required reading for the folks who do!
Product Details :
Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (August 22, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0321700759
ISBN-13: 978-0321700759
Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 1.2 x 9 inches
More Details about Essential SharePoint 2010: Overview, Governance, and Planning Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series 1st edition
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