Episode 138: Delivering SharePoint Success: Mentoring Workshop

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This episode is sponsored by:

In the 2009 listener survey you asked us to include more products into our programming. This episode is the 2nd episode in which we introduce a product to you.

We are welcoming back Dux Raymond Sy who is the author of the book “SharePoint for Project Management”. In the coming months Dux is holding a series of Worskshops titled: Delivering SharePoint Success: Mentoring Workshops. Every PM Podcast listener will receive a 25% discount by using the appropriate coupon code and one lucky winner will even be able to get in for free. Listen to the interview to learn what coupon code to use and how you can win.

But we aren't just talking about the seminars. We also want to help ensure that your SharePoint projects get started the right way. So in this interview we not only discuss how SharePoint can help you increase worker productivity, improve business process efficiency and streamline business processes but we also learn what Dux recommends as the first 3 steps to take if you are going to implement SharePoint in your organization.

And as always we have reached out to our followers on Twitter and will be answering these questions as well:

• @Habib_Schems - I've just bought his book! I'd like to know how we can implement pmbok processes in sharepoint workflows! Thanks!
• @ryanendres: - What SharePoint PMO plug-ins do you like? (ie: EPM Live; pmPoint...)

Finally - here are the resources that Dux mentions in the interview or recommends that you check out:

• Articles:
  • 5 Reasons Why Executive SharePoint Ignorance is Not Bliss : http://bit.ly/7tKkKz
  • How to Prioritize Business Needs Before Implementing SharePoint : http://bit.ly/8sCiVR
• Screencasts:
  • How to Build a Change Control System with SharePoint : http://bit.ly/2SJEXz
  • SharePoint Worst Practices: 5 Common Mistakes in Deploying SharePoint : http://bit.ly/2oXk4i
  • Best Practices in Gathering Requirements for SharePoint Projects : http://bit.ly/10lJUk

Click "Read more..." below to read the transcript.

PM Podcast Episode 138 Transcript

Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: This is The Project Management Podcast™. We bring project management topics to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at www.pm-podcast.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to episode number 138. I am Cornelius Fichtner.

This is The Project Management Podcast™ for the18th of January 2010, nice to have you with us.

If you recall, you’ve heard me say this a couple of times already in the 2009 Project Management Podcast listener survey, one thing that was clear is you said ‘We want to hear more about products, Cornelius, Tell us more about project management‑related products.’ Well, guess what? This episode today is just another one of those episodes where we will be discussing a product. In particular, it’s going to be a mentoring workshop that you can attend.

Yeah but you know me, I want to help improve project management around the world so there is no way that we could have an episode without really good tips and tricks and practical application of the topic that we are going to be talking about and my guest today is Dux Raymond Sy.

Podcast Interview

Cornelius Fichtner: Dux, are you here?

Dux Raymond Sy: I'm here. Thank you for having me. Happy New Year!

Cornelius Fichtner: Absolutely! Well everyone, you remember Dux probably from Episode number 119 where we talked about his book “SharePoint for Project Management”. That’s what it’s called, right?

Dux Raymond Sy: That’s right!

Cornelius Fichtner: And you are here today to talk to us about your seminar series which is titled "Delivering SharePoint Success: Mentoring Workshops" but before we get into that. Let’s turn to Twitter. I always like at people’s Twitter profiles and in your Twitter profile, you called yourself SharePoint sensei, pragmatic PM, prolific author, dynamic speaker. That’s a lot! Tell us a little bit about what it is that you do. What’s behind these words?

Dux Raymond Sy: Thank you. A lot of people ask me about it too and I said, there’s one more thing missing is aspiring chef but I don’t think that would fit well with that line.

Anyway, I'm a managing partner with Innovative-e. We’re an organization of experts around project management business and more importantly technologies like SharePoint. So what I do specifically in my organization is I do a couple of things. I help manage a lot of our projects that relates with SharePoint in enterprise project management-related deployments that we help our clients with, that’s one.

And second also, I'm more along the lines, lack of a better word, the evangelist, the mascot if you may of the organization where I engage a lot of people through social media, through presentation and major events technology-related or project management-related events. And really what we hope to achieve in a lot of the work we do is to help organizations better themselves and be empowered and more importantly, find the benefits of technology to meet their business needs. We believe that being able to support or deliver key solutions to challenges business face day to day like project management is very, very important rather than just throwing technology and say ‘okay, see you! Here’s the technology’ so that’s what we do and that’s why I'm really excited about this workshop that we’re offering.

Cornelius Fichtner: Alright! Well, let’s jump right into the workshop. Again, title is Delivering SharePoint Success: Mentoring Workshop and at some point, we need to talk about that title ‘mentoring workshop,’ I’d like to know what that is all about as well.

Dux Raymond Sy: Absolutely.

Cornelius Fichtner: But let me read a couple of sentences here from the opening. Microsoft SharePoint has shifted the paradigm in enterprise information management and team collaboration. That’s what you say here on the workshop website.

Dux Raymond Sy: Right.

Cornelius Fichtner: By empowering knowledge workers, SharePoint can increase work productivity, improve business process efficiency and streamline business processes. Alright! Why?

Dux Raymond Sy: Very good questions and that’s one of the key questions I always ask my customers or people I talk to. So this is a promise that SharePoint as a tool, as a technology but really, what does that mean?

So for example, let’s think about project management since most of your listeners are in the project management realms. If you think about managing projects, we engage in a lot of little challenges that we think it’s a necessary evil but it could be improved upon with technologies like SharePoint.

For example, where do you keep you project artifacts? In the recent survey, it was found out that the tool that project managers use a lot today we’d like to admit or not is email. Yeah, like if somebody was looking for the requirements doc and where do you look for it? Well, it’s in the email.

Cornelius Fichtner: [Laughs] Yeah, you’re right.

Dux Raymond Sy: Where is your status meeting update? It’s in the email. So that’s one and then maybe if you get audited, you need to pull up some other artifact ‘maybe it’s in the network share or maybe it’s in the Excel file.’ So that’s one challenge, very poor project artifact management and some times, we say it is what it is.

And then another challenge is how many times have you end up for example, in your project, you have to enter a key project information in Excel or Microsoft Project. Yet you do the exact same thing. Take the same set of information and maybe enter in your financial system in the organization and take the same set of information, enter it in I don’t know, some third-party products. So you just entered the same set of information in three different places. Now, how much time did you spend? That’s one challenge.

And then the next question becomes, if you’re in a highly-compliant environment, where’s the true record? Does that mean the next time you update one set of information, you forgot to update the other? What’s going to happen to that? So with SharePoint, it can streamline on this. So it could be a simple as for example if you work with SharePoint, you have a project management website, you enter the data for your meeting in this project management website using SharePoint, automatically it’s going to stream through Outlook and maybe if you have your Outlook connected to your Blackberry, it’s going to come through there too. So you’d have to do it three times and that I see is very, very powerful to enable us to improve efficiency, more importantly do our jobs as project managers and not worry about where the data is.

Cornelius Fichtner: Let’s talk quickly about the actual content of the workshop or what it contains rather because when I think project management and SharePoint, I can think of two areas. “A” is how to run a project in setting up SharePoint for your organization…

Dux Raymond Sy: Correct.

Cornelius Fichtner: …so if we don’t have SharePoint, we’d like to implement SharePoint, what’s the best way of doing it? Or the second aspect could be, I have a project. I want to use SharePoint, what’s the best way of setting it up? Which of these two is it or is it both?

Dux Raymond Sy: It’s actually the first one. You made a great point about the second one because that’s the essentially the book I wrote.

Cornelius Fichtner: Yes.

Dux Raymond Sy: The book I wrote, I say, SharePoint for Project Management. That assumes you already have SharePoint in place appropriately and you’re going to leverage that platform as a project manager to help you better manage projects so a lot of the things I’ve discussed in the book, that’s the intent.

But this workshop, it’s actually the opposite. If I were to frame or put the words, flip it, it would be like project management for SharePoint.

Cornelius Fichtner: Right. How do I manage a project in order to set up SharePoint for my company and do it right so that the end result is done correctly to help my business, what did you call it, increase work productivity, improve business process efficiency and streamline business processes. Correct?

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete PDF transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.