Building enterprise platforms - off the beaten path - SharePoint User Group UK (North West Region)...

Off the beaten path…….

Building SharePoint Enterprise Platforms#suguk

Andy TalbotFebruary 02nd, 2016

Who?

Andy Talbot

SharePoint & Office 365 Consultant

SUGUK IOM Leader | Collab365 LIVE TV Host

/AndyTalbot @SharePointAndy SharePointAndy.com

Col lab365 Summit100% FREE…..100% ONLINE…..100% AWESOME!

• LIVE TV Channel (from Microsoft Redmond) – 3 days covering IT PRO, DEV & BIZ• Content covering Azure, Office 365 , SharePoint and Microsoft Learning• Multiple Languages

SIGN UP NOW! http://bit.ly/collab365summit

Content CoveredThis session includes:

• Pain points• Lessons learnt• Sensible questions• Common sense thoughts

…you decide what applies to you!

SharePoint On-Prem IS ALIVE!“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/

Understand your Vis ion

The G-Spot – Governance!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

IT GovernanceAccording to the IT Governance Institute, there are five areas of focus:

• Strategic Alignment• Value Delivery• Resource Management• Risk Management• Performance Measures

Read more here:http://www.cio.com/article/2438931/governance/it-governance-definition-and-solutions.html

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

Qual i ty Assurance• Can you afford not too?

• Maintains standards

• What’s more expensive; testing or loss of service / poor user experience?

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

Understand test types• Understand what to test AND when

• Update test plans to reflect changes:

- 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 tt le deeper

Understand what each type of test area means

RACI

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?

RACI ExampleDAD 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

Roles & Responsibi l i t iesIntroduce clear separation of duties e.g.

• SharePoint Product Owner• Configuration Manager• Platform SMEs• Functional SMEs• Support SMEs• Trainers• QA / Testers• Requirement Gatherers

Roles & Responsibi l i t iesDifferent each role comes a mix of responsibilities. e.g.

• Leadership• Support• Management• Planning• Strategy

Understand who is responsible for what in your organisation

Release ManagementTypical responsibilities:

• Deployment Management• Environments Management• Release Process Management• Build Management• Configuration Management• Change Management

Be careful . . . .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?

Staying CurrentIt’s important:

• Understand vendor product and strategy developments• Helps you to plan ahead for

change• Underpins personal

development planning (right?)

DocumentationIt’s important:

• To be current• Relevant• Stored in an appropriate place

(e.g. don’t store SharePoint DR docs in SharePoint!)• Version controlled• Maintained

Typical DocumentationAt a minimum the following should be documented:

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

Successive Layers of Defence• Project Governance• Architecture Governance• Information Governance• Release Management• Quality Assurance

Shared Platforms• 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)

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

Resources & People• 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.

Embracing TalentAsk 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

Captur ing User FeedbackAsk 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?

Real ignmentSometimes 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 if 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….”

Communicat ionIt’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, AwarenessINVOLVE, EngagementINTEGRATE, Commitment

Guiding Pr inciples

• 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 we 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 FunctionsTypical 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 MeansAvailability % 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”

Good Bye for Now!

Andy Talbot

SharePoint & Office 365 Consultant

SUGUK IOM Leader | Collab365 LIVE TV Host

/AndyTalbot @SharePointAndy SharePointAndy.com