We regularly see SharePoint introduced by IT then thrust upon unsuspecting users as (for example) a replacement for file shares or a cure-all collaboration tool. But several important questions get missed: What are the business problems we’re trying to solve by rolling out SharePoint? What are the short- and long-term objectives around introducing or upgrading SharePoint in a particular organization? How exactly do we go about spec’ing and sizing SharePoint farms? What factors will ultimately drive not only the initial go-live state of your SharePoint farm, but also map out its growth strategy? Finally, what’s the best way to proceed if we don’t have (or can’t easily get) the answers to all these questions yet?

1. Developing a Business
Requirements Strategy for
SharePoint Infrastructure
Brian Lalancette, Navantis

2. -OR-

3. What You Didn’t Know About
Business Requirements for
SharePoint Infrastructure Is
Shocking!

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Who Am I?
About me:
Consultant at www.navantis.com
SharePoint infrastructure specialist
PowerShell nerd
• AutoSPInstaller
• AutoSPSourceBuilder
Lazy admin
Even lazier blogger

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Audience Poll
Quick poll
Business Users
Power Users
Admins
Developers
Executives
*It’s OK to vote more than once
(i.e. admit to being more than one) ☺

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Background

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Business, Schmusiness
Why gather requirements?
Build something that actually fits *
Save money; spend wisely on areas that count
Focus on purpose
Opens the conversation between stakeholders
and IT

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First Things Last
“Where does it hurt?”
What business problem are we trying to solve?
What gap are we trying to fill?
Learn a bit about the nature of the business *

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Common Pitfalls
Where does I.T. hurt?
But tech is cool! Implement it for its own sake!
“We’d rather not involve the business” *
• (Customer have actually told me this)
Cart before the proverbial horse
• IT department makes the call on what tools to use
Who’s serving whom?
• Business users feel the pain of either:
Bleeding edge technology
Legacy, out-of-date platforms

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Sample
Questionnaire

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Sample Questionnaire
Overall approach
Gauge your audience
• Technical?
• Decision Makers?
• Power Users
• End Users (wait, what?)
“Zoom in/out” as required *
Ultimately geared toward helping to make
infrastructure decisions
Assumes this is on-premises

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Sample Questionnaire
Questions
Type of site (Intra/Extra/Inter)
Number of employees
• Number of SharePoint users (& growth rate!)
• Concurrency rate (more on this later)
Where are your employees/users? *
Employee/user privilege model
• Open by default vs. closed by default
Will they be working with large files? *
Usage patterns:
• Collaboration / Consumption / Mix (ratio)

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Sample Questionnaire (continued)
More questions
Services & service apps for SharePoint *
• Business Data Connectivity
• Managed Metadata
• Office Web Apps
• Visio Graphics Service
• “We want it all” Oh really now…
My Sites / Personal Sites
• Fear & Confusion
Governance
Capacity Planning
State of Active Directory?
Who gets personal sites?

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Sample Questionnaire (continued)
Even more questions
Uptime & Availability
• How long can business tolerate a service outage?
• At what times (if at all) can they tolerate outages?
• Can they stand to lose any data? How many hours’ worth? *
BUT
• As downtime approaches zero, cost approaches infinity ☺
• Therefore balance a reasonable expectation of uptime with
customer’s budget

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Sample Questionnaire (continued)
“Great, but we’re just upgrading…”
Not “just” upgrading *
Take this opportunity to review prior requirements
(if they had even been identified/considered)
DB attach, or manual/automated migration?
Size of databases
Custom and/or non-upgradeable solutions
Move your clutter vs. opportunity to start fresh(er)

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Sample Questionnaire (continued)
Broader organizational concerns
Risk Tolerance
Desire for Innovation / Platform Currency
Data Retention Requirements

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Additional
Considerations

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Thoughts on Concurrency
Concurrency is everything!
MS likes to use “total number of users”
• However it’s kind of meaningless as-is… *
• Concurrency is usually expressed as a percentage
• Average number of user sessions at a particular time
• 10% as a rule of thumb (Intranets)
• Internet (public-facing) concurrency much tougher to nail down
• Do we anticipate peak periods of abnormally high concurrency?

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Farm Sizing
Farm size & capacity
Implications of a farm that’s too small
• Poor performance
• Running out of space
• Lots of warnings in CA that tend to be ignored
Implications of a farm that’s too big
• Staff required to operate and monitor
• Patching (downtime, costs, overtime) x number of servers
• Complexity outweights benefits

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Mitigation Strategy (continued)
Plan for:
Future growth
• Monitor performance & load proactively
Scalability
• Virtualization
• Storage capacity (SANs, dynamically-expanding VHDX etc.)
• Farm topologies
• Be ready with tools, scripts etc. that will allow you to scale out the
farm
Staff readiness
• Training *
• Leave-behind materials

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Mitigation Strategy
But what if…
IT has already made some of the decisions (prior
to your involvement)?
Corporate culture or policy makes it unfeasible to
interview business representatives?
You’ve exhausted all avenues?

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Summary
Summary
Business is the reason we’re in business
If you can’t think of a business case for
implementing x, why are you doing it?
Think about the goals & purpose behind
SharePoint farm size & design (and cost)

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Summary
Don’t…

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Q & A

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Contact Links & References
More reading & contact info
Twitter: @brianlala
Blog: http://spinsiders.com/brianlala
Blog: http://blog.navantis.com/author/brianlalancette
Some guest posts:
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/02/01/wee
kend-scripter-using-autospinstaller-and-autospsourcebuilder.aspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2010/03/23/hey-
scripting-guy-march-23-2010.aspx
• https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/itpro/Pages/Whats-in-
Store-for-AutoSPInstaller-v-Next.aspx

26. Thank you for your attention!
This presentation will be available on the Toronto
SharePoint Summit web site a few days after the event.

27. Please rate this session!
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SESSION 5.1
Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for
SharePoint Infrastructure