The first concern that a manager or a person assigned to a SharePoint implementation asks is “How many people will I need to manage the environment effectively?”. It might be written someplace, or maybe an expert can reveal a certain amount of staff per user ratio, but honestly, I haven’t seen it yet. At least from a real-world perspective there is not a “silver bullet” that you can bring to your leadership and have them sign-off on the expense of running your team. Again, there might be ideal numbers, but what it’s going to come down to is a negotiation between you and your leadership as to how many headcount can be added to your project/department budget.
Arguing Against the Mythical “Rock Star” SharePoint Team
Before we start this portion, I believe the only “Rock Star” SharePoint teams exist at Microsoft, top-level Independent Software Vendors and Consulting companies. I do think there are experts in the field that are above-and-beyond all levels in the Enterprise and Small and Mid-sized Business (SMB) market. So for deployments in general, call in the experts in the beginning and then start assembling a concept that is used in the NFL (and other sports), where teams draft the “best player available”. So the experts of the world are the “first and second round draft picks”, the people that will get you up-to-speed while you get your team where they need to be. Your mission as the leader/manager of the implementation is to find the best SharePoint people you can find. This task is hard enough, but as the economy continues to get stronger and demand for SharePoint professionals continues to grow (hard to believe but will happen) you will be happy to get people who can skillfully work as a team for your users.
My argument against retaining the “SharePoint Rockstar” is that you will spend 50% on one person, versus getting two people that can really help your deployment with support and operational concerns. Also there is a satisfaction-factor that needs to be accounted for. In a few months/years the person could get bored and move on an set you back to square one. This can happen with any employee, for many reasons, but if they’re a “rock star”, they want to be challenged and work with the latest technologies and if you do not offer that, that will put you in a precarious position. That’s why the “rock star” should be in highly dynamic environment where they are fed with this type of desired experience.
Do You Want a Scalpel? or a Swiss Army Knife?
This is another misconception that might bite you, having specialists in your deployment teams. If you are a large corporate team that needs a development team, a network/administration team, and a support team then you might be in a special situation initially, but I would say only 20% of the companies fall in that situation, the rest need an all-around SharePoint person whom is moderately experienced with a SharePoint skill (Admin or Dev), willing to learn what’s needed, can follow the published governance plan and can efficiently bounce from the various lanes that will inevitably appear in a day’s work. Working with the Help Desk or end users is a huge plus that can improve your customer service, as well.
The argument of having a person who *just* does dev or admin is a limiting factor that can determine how your team performs. Remember, think “Swiss Army Knife” during the first few years, there are going to be issues that come up where multiple hats and skills are needed. A developer cannot do an admin’s job and vise-versa, but an admin-focused person can help a development-focused person with tasks that involve Out-of-the-Box (OOTB) requests that a user has on a daily basis and after a couple requests can understand the concepts to study the required actions to finish the job in the future. That falls into the “Smart person” category. Someone once told me “You don’t have to remember everything, you just need to know where to find it”. This is appropriate in that you want people who can provide answers on a variety of topics, not a subject expert in one particular area. Build your team so they can cross-train into all areas.
Proposing an Organization
So this is what we really want to know, how many people and what type of roles do we need to be successful moving forward in the future? The short answer: it depends on how many people you have to support.
Let’s look at a small enterprise implementation with 5,000 users to support. You need the following roles:
- Manager, Lead or Project Manager (whatever your organization has identified as a responsible party)
- Three SharePoint resources (an admin with development experience, or a developer with admin experience)
- One customer support person that works on lower level requests, or train your help desk to assist you with these calls.
- Either a Database Administrator, or a resource in your organization that can handle the duties On-Demand. Some organizations might have SQL Server DBAs that can handle these tasks if given the right information to execute when needed.
That’s it, the multiplier is different whether SharePoint is hosted on-premise, in the Cloud or by a hosting provider. As an example, you might be able to forgo a DBA because your hosting provider supports the SharePoint databases in the farm, so one less person to have on staff.
In the end, You Know Your Organization, so Plan Accordingly
Different organizations need to focus on different objectives to be successful, so know what you need and focus your human resources on that task at hand. If you require custom functionality and have developers on-hand to meet that need, gravitate to those projects. If you have a lot of users who need training and a lot of hands-on help to get initiatives going, have a support-minded staff. Which ever way you choose to go, turning the ship around takes a more than a little time, so before that first person is assigned to your project/team, make sure that person will be successful and has the skill set for the work you are having them do for your team.
Everyone should be acutely aware in both good and bad years that very few leaders are going to give a team the organization to support a SharePoint farm with best-scenario staff numbers so having the flexibility to adjust is going to the biggest dividend related to your deployment. Building a team that will successfully launch the use and maintain a high level of supporting SharePoint is both challenging and rewarding, and like in most technology projects, finding a balance of people and process is the key to it all.