What's been your biggest SharePoint challenge to date?

Here are some of the common problems that I've personally seen during my career as a SharePoint Administrator and Developer:

1. Security Spaghetti. SharePoint allows the users the ability to "break inheritance" on any object, which includes sites and content. The end result is that both users and administrators have the ability to orphan objects that deter information sharing. Proper planning can mitigate this issue, but it won't solve the issue completely. There are some 3rd part tools available to help reign an any unruly security in SharePoint, however they can be quite expensive: http://www.idera.com/Products/SharePoint/SharePoint-enterprise-manager/

2. Lack of Training. Many users are still confused about how to really use SharePoint. I believe focus really needs to be on the Administrators to block out enough time to gather training content from Microsoft and hold learning sessions with the end-users. Training is usually only a second thought or "only if we need it" option, but I think it's critical to an intranets success. It helps increase user adoption, and it empowers end users to try things on their own with out the help of IT support. Just make sure policies are in place so that no one REALLY screws something up! http://office2010.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-server-help/take-sharepoint-...

3. Lack of Planning. I've seen several intranets that have been hastily installed and configured without any thought to growth or scale. Just answering some questions before installation will allow one to think through some of the future challenges. Questions such as

"How many total users are expected to be online at the same time?",
"If SharePoint went down for 4 hours mid-day, what would be the business impact?",
"Who owns that content and how do they need to share it?"

4. Lack of Corporate Buy-In. Users are most likely not to like something if the executives don't like it. A SharePoint intranet needs to be customized to the needs of the users. Many times business processes get changed to meet the requirements of SharePoint, and not the other way around! This causes people to be very accepting of this new technology. The biggest way to get executives behind your project is to show the added value to it's users. It has to be metrics that they can realize such as: We saved X amount of time per month for 10 employees. Some users still have a bad taste in their mouths because of past experiences with SharePoint, so you may need to call your intranet something other than "SharePoint".

Many of the challenges we face with this technology are boiled down to this: people and process. Business processes, governance, and training must be in place to help shape this technology as it grows, or it will grow quickly out of hand.

Michael Donahoo
SharePoint Developer
http://donahoo-development.com