SharePoint offers new opportunities for information specialists

Author: Martin Sanderson
TFPL, Senior Consultant

Remembering Ralph Poole’s reflection in his past blog post that the days when IT developers managed (often with little or no success) all the processes for systems and user requirements analysis may be coming to an end with the arrival of SharePoint platforms.  With SharePoint much of the functionality is preconfigured and the most important prerequisite (and challenge) is deciding how to organize and present information to support users in their day to day operations and tasks. Poole concluded that “Unfortunately, for developers, this means MOSS 2007 needs configuration rather than development”.  Perhaps this is even more so with the introduction of SharePoint 2010.  So move over developers and move in information specialists who are well equipped to deal with information architecture, content types, metadata, search configuration and site navigation.