Developing a Business
Requirements Strategy for
SharePoint InfrastructureBrian Lalancette, Navantis
-OR-
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� Legacy, out-of-date platforms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
Thank you for your attention!This presentation will be available on the Toronto
SharePoint Summit web site a few days after the event.
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SESSION 5.1Developing a Business Requirements Strategy for
SharePoint Infrastructure