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Let's play a game of "what would you do?"...
Where I work, we are currently running a 9-year-old install of Microsoft SharePoint 2007. As the SharePoint Administrator for the entire organization, I inherited it from my predecessor's forebear who was tossed into the SharePoint pool by Headquarters even though he knew absolutely nothing about SharePoint. He was a network admin guy, and in typical HQ fashion, that must mean that he knew what he was doing, right?
Rather than plan and come up with governance and guidelines, every time he had to create a new page or site, he just used whatever trick or treat he found in the textbook that day..
For three years now, I have been working stoically to fix all the problems that he created over 700 SharePoint sites (SharePoint, where every page is a site)... There are parts of the system that even -- to this day -- I don't understand why he did the way he did, and trust me, everything's a nightmare...
For two years now, we've been asking HQ when we're going to upgrade the SharePoint services to 2010, if not 2013. They have successfully completely ignored any requests and generally treat our entire organization (and me personally) as a mosquito-level annoyance.
Fast forward to today, when we learn that -- because Server 2003 is at the end-of-life and SharePoint 2007 won't run on later server versions -- they are being compelled to upgrade "by the end of the month".
Migration isn't going well AT ALL, and the guy they have handling it means well. He's normally their "go to guy" for all things SharePoint, but I'm getting the feeling he knows about as much as I do at this point, which is to say very little about SharePoint 2013...
Here's where I'm upset.
For the past three years, I've been bemoaning the fact that we are dealing with a broken system put up by a guy who -- while probably a great network tech -- didn't know WTF he was doing. As a result, SharePoint adoption is suffering because there's no real impetus for users to actually embrace the system...
We have ONE shot here to do things the right way, and to get it right from the get-go. That would involve a week or two of update training, a completely wiped and fresh install, and about 6-to-9 months of effort to plan, build, then migrate things by hand where possible.
Instead, it feels like we're just going to take what we're given, which is to say a compounded, broken, and disorganized system that everyone already shuns.
As geeky and brown-nosy as it sounds, I actually take pride in my work, and I love what I do, so I'm upset at the prospect of simply continuing the shitstorm that actively endangers my job, and my happiness...
The question becomes, how to best lay out my frustrations to management (and HQ) in a non-aggressive, non-confrontational way.
If you're still reading at this point, what would you do?
Where I work, we are currently running a 9-year-old install of Microsoft SharePoint 2007. As the SharePoint Administrator for the entire organization, I inherited it from my predecessor's forebear who was tossed into the SharePoint pool by Headquarters even though he knew absolutely nothing about SharePoint. He was a network admin guy, and in typical HQ fashion, that must mean that he knew what he was doing, right?
Rather than plan and come up with governance and guidelines, every time he had to create a new page or site, he just used whatever trick or treat he found in the textbook that day..
For three years now, I have been working stoically to fix all the problems that he created over 700 SharePoint sites (SharePoint, where every page is a site)... There are parts of the system that even -- to this day -- I don't understand why he did the way he did, and trust me, everything's a nightmare...
For two years now, we've been asking HQ when we're going to upgrade the SharePoint services to 2010, if not 2013. They have successfully completely ignored any requests and generally treat our entire organization (and me personally) as a mosquito-level annoyance.
Fast forward to today, when we learn that -- because Server 2003 is at the end-of-life and SharePoint 2007 won't run on later server versions -- they are being compelled to upgrade "by the end of the month".
Migration isn't going well AT ALL, and the guy they have handling it means well. He's normally their "go to guy" for all things SharePoint, but I'm getting the feeling he knows about as much as I do at this point, which is to say very little about SharePoint 2013...
Here's where I'm upset.
For the past three years, I've been bemoaning the fact that we are dealing with a broken system put up by a guy who -- while probably a great network tech -- didn't know WTF he was doing. As a result, SharePoint adoption is suffering because there's no real impetus for users to actually embrace the system...
We have ONE shot here to do things the right way, and to get it right from the get-go. That would involve a week or two of update training, a completely wiped and fresh install, and about 6-to-9 months of effort to plan, build, then migrate things by hand where possible.
Instead, it feels like we're just going to take what we're given, which is to say a compounded, broken, and disorganized system that everyone already shuns.
As geeky and brown-nosy as it sounds, I actually take pride in my work, and I love what I do, so I'm upset at the prospect of simply continuing the shitstorm that actively endangers my job, and my happiness...
The question becomes, how to best lay out my frustrations to management (and HQ) in a non-aggressive, non-confrontational way.
If you're still reading at this point, what would you do?
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