ECM - MOSS 2007 Top 10 things to avoid

So MOSS 2007 is a great platform for driving collaboration and usability around getting documents and other electronic information.

Here are the top 10 things that you should avoid. OK so it's not just MOSS 2007 that these apply to. But given the amount of MOSS out there and the types of people involved it is a timely list.

1. No business objectives - Why are we doing this anyway? You have got to have a connection to the business objective that you are trying to solve. Otherwise you will get a File Server on steroids result. Lot's of messy content with a pretty interface.


2. No measures for success - If you don't know what you are doing then how can you measure it, I guess failure then comes as a complete surprise.


3. Setup.exe - Commonly called the "Nike" install; That's right, a straight install with no fore thought will spell mid term disaster. This generally indicates that all the other points that we are talking in this list will not have been covered up front. In that case, Good luck guys!


4. No Governance - You need sponsors and people to make this all happen past setup.exe, who will provide the high level air cover, own content, administer sites, decide and make changes and ... (take a breath here !).


5. Lets put is all on one box with no planning - Prior infrastructure planning for growth up front equals a real pain for the migration later on. Not to mention that you will also need to ask for more tin. At this point I will put in a plug for virtualisation, think about it, seriously!


6. No information architecture - If you don't know how content will be structures then you won't have a clue where things will go the chances are you will not find any of it later, on. Also you may as well welcome yourself to Site Collection hell right now.


7. No rollout plan past setup.exe - So now that's all installed what next, you better have a plan past setup.exe please. Who's first, why, what for? And what extension and development needs to be done up front before you get rolling?


8. No communication plan - What , how, for who and when?


9. No training - Sorry we have spent all the budget, you told me this was intuitive! Wrong answer, you need to plan for the training and make sensible decisions up front.


10. No backup, recover or DR plan - Things go wrong and this has now become a mission critical platform for enterprise content, what is you get out of gaol plan?

Oh, and did I forget testing? Oh, don't worry it will just work anyway, at least it does on my desktop!