Building SharePoint Enterprise Platforms - Off the beaten path

O f f t h e B e a t e n P a t h . . . . Building SharePoint Enterprise Platforms

w i th Andy Ta l bo t

Who?

Andy Talbot

SharePoint Architect | #SUGUK IOM Leader |

MCSE: SharePoint | Isle of Man & UK Nomadic |

Coauthoring ‘SharePoint Survivors Guide’

/AndyTalbot @SharePointAndy SharePointAndy.com

Shocke r !

We won’t talk about Azure today, as I’m going to cover this as a new dedicated session (sorry!)

Con ten t Cove r ed

This session includes: • Pain points • Lessons learnt • Sensible questions • Common sense thoughts

…you decide what applies to you!

Sha r ePo i n t On-P rem IS AL IVE ! “When it comes to the cloud, we’re “all in,” but we’re also realistic. We have a large on-premises installed base that’s important to us, and we’re committed to future releases of the server.” – Jared Spataro, Senior Director, Microsoft Office Division, “Yammer and Enterprise Social Roadmap Update” March 2013 Ref: http://www.collabshow.com/2013/10/21/sharepoint-still-not-dead-and-even-on-prem-is-not-dead/

Unde r s t and you r V i s i o n

Produc t Capab i l i t i e s

• Do you understand what you are trying to achieve?

• Will you have service separation?

• What is the purpose/s of the platform?

• Understand different capability behaviours e.g. Collaboration apps will be read/write intensive VS WCM read intensive

Gove r nance

Governance is SERIOUS stuff and you can’t afford to not think about it. “SharePoint Governance is a guideline of rules within your organisation, including what, why, when, where and how #SPGovManifesto” – Andy Talbot The SharePoint Governance Manifesto’ - http://bit.ly/AmazonSPGovManifesto

Gove r nance Ax i s There are multiple governance axis, but from a platform perspective, at a minimum you should have considered : • Organisational • Informational • Operational

Part of the story: http://blog.aditi.com/enterprise_social/sharepoint-governance-an-inside-out-perspective-part-2/

Good Gove r nance

• Consensus Orientated • Participatory • Follows the rule of law • Effective and Efficient • Accountable • Transparent • Responsive • Equitable and Inclusive

Qua l i t y Assu r ance

• Can you afford not too?

• Enforces quality

• What’s more expensive; testing or loss of service?

• It should be baked into deployments and configuration change/s

Unde r s t and t e s t t y pes • Understand what to test AND when

• Update test plans when you change

something:

- Platform changes - New developments

• Don’t undervalue your QA team REF: http://www.sharethepoint.com/Learn/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=122

Go a l i t t l e d eepe r

Understand what each type of test area means

RAC I

R RESPONSIBLE: • Who is/will be doing this task? • Who is assigned to work on this task?

A ACCOUNTABLE: • Who’s head will roll if this goes wrong? • Who has the authority to take decision?

C CONSULTED: • Anyone who can tell me more about this

task? • Any stakeholders already identified?

I INFORMED: • Anyone whose work depends on this task? • Who has to be kept updated about the

progress?

RAC I E xamp l e

DAD MOM SON DAUGHTER Choose a recipe

C A/R C C

Grocery Shopping

R

Pre-heat the oven

R

Prepare ingredients

A R

Bake dinner in oven

A/R

Ro l e s & Respons i b i l i t i e s Introduce clear separation of duties e.g. • SharePoint Architect • Configuration Manager • Platform SMEs • Functional SMEs • Support SMEs • Trainers • Testers • Product Managers • Requirement Gatherers

Ro l e s & Respons i b i l i t i e s

Different each role comes a mix of responsibilities. e.g. • Leadership • Support • Management • Planning • Performance • Strategy Understand who is responsible for what in your organisation

Re l e a se Managemen t

Typical responsibilities: • Deployment Management • Environments Management • Release Process Management • Build Management • Configuration Management • Change Management

Be ca r e f u l . . . .

Sometimes we overlook things (shocking!). Maybe we didn’t stop to consider: • When will product support

stop? • Base or Project cost? • How long can I keep my

resources?

Stay i n g Cu r r en t

It’s important: • Understand vendor product and

strategy developments • Helps you to plan ahead for

change • Underpins personal

development planning (right?)

Documen t a t i o n

It’s important: • To be current • Stored in an appropriate place

(e.g. don’t store SharePoint DR docs in SharePoint!)

• Version controlled • Maintained

Typ i c a l Documen t a t i o n

At a minimum the following should be documented:

• On boarding process • Build & Configuration • DR plan • Development HLD’s & LLD’s • Test plans

Successive Layers of Defence

• Project Governance • Architecture Governance • Information Governance • Release Management • Quality Assurance

Sha r ed P l a t f o rms

• Solution delivery aligns to platform capacity

• Changes are communicated to all platform stakeholders

• Peer review opportunities (DWG?)

• Switching on features may affect others (e.g. Auditing)

Sha r ePo i n t Cen t r e o f E xce l l e nce

See Andrew Woodward’s deck from SPC12: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2012/SPC214

Resou r ces & Peop l e

• Often we ask for more system resource, but don’t plan for more human resources

• Do we on-board people properly, or are they left guessing on your standards, processes, etc.

Emb rac i n g Ta l e n t

Ask yourself: • Do you encourage and foster learning

and development? • Do you recognise emerging talent? • Shouldn’t each capability have a base

achievement standard? E.g. Certification, internal standards, etc.

• Does training align with product roadmap?

Technology is nothing without people

Cap tu r i n g Use r Feedback

Ask yourself: • Do we really LISTEN? • Is it EASY for users to feedback? • Do we REVIEW feedback? • Do we MEASURE THE VALUE of

delivery against customer feedback?

• Do we let GOOD IDEAS DIE?

Rea l i g nmen t

Sometimes we need to realign for various different reasons, e.g. • Mergers & acquisitions • Improve efficiency and effectiveness • Senior management changes • Market response • Change of strategy

Have we thought about how we would approach this the need arose?

Who makes the Decisions?

Carefully consider who should AND shouldn’t be making different types of decisions. Worryingly it’s not always the right people, e.g.

• Project Managers making technical

decisions (tick boxing?) • Techies making business decisions • Power Brokers (you know the type!)

Do decisions support the vision? “To Steer…. Governance….”

Commun i c a t i o n

It’s important to: • Have a communication plan • Get across the intended value • Set expectation • Use it to promote cultural

change • Show that you listened • Promote recent successes • Warn about service disruption

INFORM, Awareness

INVOLVE, Engagement

INTEGRATE, Commitment

Gu i d i n g P r i n c i p l e s

• Set an internal expectation

• Encourage commitment and

quality

• Encourage early warning of

issues

• Enjoy what you do!

Support Framework

• Establish triage process • Understand your estate • Identify trends, update training and FAQs • Encourage community feedback, possibly

with Gamification techniques

Capacity Planning

• Recertification process? • Monitor growth • Storage reduction opportunities • Plan for Site Quotas & Content

Databases • Understand boundaries, limits and

thresholds, and respect them! • Migrations • Site creation control • Auditing • Service Separation • Storage Tiers / IOPS

Does existing hardware

meet company’s

needs

Determine the company’s

future needs

Identify opportunities to consolidate

Determine if existing

infrastructure can support anticipated

growth

Implement Capacity Planning

Load Planning

• Profile expected traffic patterns (account for time differences in different countries)

• Understand usage age patterns of each web app – determine the best architectures to fit (e.g Collaboration – large read / write)

• Understand caching options and what they do (which can impact platform capacity)

• Office Web Apps (SP2010)

Get the Balance right

• What will come first, Load or Capacity?

• Do you understand your points of failure?

• Have you planned for the future?

Architecture / Topologies

• Properly planned? • Physical & Logical design

Documented? • Use it to understand how to

change your farm/s • Traditional vs Streamlined

topologies

Technical diagrams for SharePoint 2013: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx

Scaling

• Understand the difference between scaling UP and scaling OUT

• Plan Content Databases (quotas, thresholds, warnings, migration process)

• Understand caches (e.g. Blob, distributed, object, page)

Monitoring

• System Logs • Performance • Growth • Usage • Functional Requests • Support Issues

….are you being PROACTIVE or REACTIVE?

Hardware Considerations

• Do you understand your hardware refresh cycle?

• If on a managed platform, do you understand your suppliers refresh cycle and limitations? Understand exit strategies too

• Will purchase restrictions prevent changes in topology

• Does your company have a cloud strategy for the future?

• Do you know what to do if you introduce new hardware (e.g. update SQL Alias, web.config, etc.)

3rd Party Tools

• Upgrade ready? • Infrastructure requirements

understood? • Training • Support model • Understand your procurement

framework • Licencing, perpetual or annual?

Have with planned for growth e.g. enough seats

vNext Ready?

• Understand your corporate roadmap

• Be as upgrade ready as possible • Understand deprecated features • Learn architectural changes, both

logical and physical • Microsoft Product Line

Architecture (PLA) "How would Microsoft deploy this technology?" or "how would Microsoft do it?" It was from this simple question that the PLA was born.

Outsourced Functions

Typical for support and development capabilities. Take time to: • Understand the ‘Continuum of

Cultural Characteristics’ • Agree on standards • Agree communication methods • Understand the QA process • Major public holidays (different

from country to country)

Patching

• 99.9% uptime really means ‘x’ downtime allowance

• Understand why you’re making a change.

• SP’s, CU’s, PU’s, COD, etc. Understand the differences - http://bit.ly/JUBWLi

• READ THE RELEASE NOTES! It might fix one thing and break another

What Availability Uptime Really Means Availability % Downtime per year Downtime per month* Downtime per week

90% ("one nine") 36.5 days 72 hours 16.8 hours

95% 18.25 days 36 hours 8.4 hours

97% 10.96 days 21.6 hours 5.04 hours

98% 7.30 days 14.4 hours 3.36 hours

99% ("two nines") 3.65 days 7.20 hours 1.68 hours

99.5% 1.83 days 3.60 hours 50.4 minutes

99.8% 17.52 hours 86.23 minutes 20.16 minutes

99.9% ("three nines") 8.76 hours 43.8 minutes 10.1 minutes

99.95% 4.38 hours 21.56 minutes 5.04 minutes

99.99% ("four nines") 52.56 minutes 4.32 minutes 1.01 minutes

99.999% ("five nines") 5.26 minutes 25.9 seconds 6.05 seconds

99.9999% ("six nines") 31.5 seconds 2.59 seconds 0.605 seconds

99.99999% ("seven nines") 3.15 seconds 0.259 seconds 0.0605 seconds

Backup & DR

• You’ve planned for it, right? • Test annually • RPO’s/RTO’s still correct? • Have you over engineered? e.g.

If no point in time recovery, why are you SQL full logging?

• Understand what dependent applications and process maybe affected

Facilities & Infrastructure

Processes & Procedures

Operational BC / DR

Plan

You cannot know it all . . . . .

• SharePoint Centre of Excellence • Developers • BA’s • Trainers • Product Owners • SMEs • Design Working Group • Information Governance (SPIG )

• Steering Committees…

R e a s o n s f o r Fa i l u r e

The ‘C’ Word – CHANGE!

“Changing behaviours at work requires changing the environment that surrounds people when they’re at work” Marc D Anderson (@sympmarc)

Is it time for gamification as an approach to facilitating changing behaviours?

Questions?

“Questions are guaranteed

in life; answers aren't”

Bye For Now!

Andy Talbot

SharePoint Architect | #SUGUK IOM Leader |

MCSE: SharePoint | Isle of Man & UK Nomadic |

Coauthoring ‘SharePoint Survivors Guide’

/AndyTalbot @SharePointAndy SharePointAndy.com