This past Saturday I spoke at the local SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities event and delivered a ‘Deep Dive’ presentation called SharePoint Implementation: When to Crawl, Walk or Run. (presentation) What I was aiming for was a next step beyond a SharePoint 101 presentation. Lots of folks have been to introductory sessions where they are shown the fire hose presentation of features and/or demonstrations of fairly complex solutions. What I want to deliver is a bit more of an explanation as to what is easy, and what takes more time to create and implement in order to start setting expectations for people to help them determine how to go about starting a platform strategy and roadmap that they can be successful with. There’s obviously a lot more that goes into that strategy, but you have to start somewhere.
The session wasn’t really a deep dive into any particular topic as much as it was a skim across the surface, while trying to give a little more depth than just features. I called out the fact that there was so much content to cover that I wouldn’t be able to show the demos or even screenshots of as much as I would have liked, so I’ll be following up by posting some follow-up content in the coming weeks to hopefully fill in some gaps and expand even further on the subject.
At a high level, the ‘crawl’ level is functionality that is available out of the box – stuff you can use right away as long as users are trained in the implementation and use of it. The ‘walk’ level is when you start to use more complicated variations of tools or more advanced features and methods. Finally ‘run’ is the most advanced usage of features and methods that requires the highest level of expertise and effort to implement. Keep in mind, however, that how we have assigned these levels is very dependent on the skills of the particular resources that are implementing it. For example if your resource is adept at configuring and customizing search, what we describe as a ‘run’ scenario might be more like a ‘walk’ effort to them. Just something to keep in mind.
The reason for this approach is to help decision makers align their solution needs with the technology – to help figure out which pieces they should tackle first. You can’t do everything at once with SharePoint or your project will fail. You need to pick your path from A to B while delivering measurable business value all along the way. (See Sarah Haase for more content on SharePoint and ROI).
When I signed up for the session, I had it in my head that it was a 2 hr session. However, when I looked at the schedule it was actually 2:45… which thankfully worked out quite well as we still filled the time up with content and questions. 
A long time, but hopefully useful to my attendees.
Another point worth mentioning that I missed in the slide deck and presentation was that the original content was put together by myself and Raymond Mitchell for a recent MNSPUG meeting. I certainly can’t take all of the credit for the content and organization.
So, check back in the next couple of weeks as I add additional posts about the key areas that we covered in the original presentation. Also feel free to let me know if there are other areas you’d like to investigate using the Crawl, Walk, Run approach.
Great post. More, please! 🙂