IM BLOG: SharePoint is a People Project: Lessons from the front line of implementation
When I first encountered SharePoint in 2009, my organisation was still heavily reliant on paper and shared drives. SharePoint arrived carrying enormous expectations. It was presented as the organised, compliant solution that could fix governance, information architecture, collaboration, access, security, retention, permissions and perhaps even user behaviour - all in one go.
What followed was less Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and more Indiana Jones and the Search for the Missing Metadata. There were sprawling sites, folders hidden inside more folders, permissions wandering into the wild west, naming conventions that made sense to someone on a Friday afternoon and migrations that became unexpected deep dives into how people really worked.
The journey taught me that SharePoint is never just a technology implementation. It is an information-management and organisational-change programme, with people at its centre.
Feeling overwhelmed is part of learning
In those early years, SharePoint felt enormous. The terminology was unfamiliar and every configuration choice seemed to depend on understanding five others. During one two-day course, a colleague and I joked that if we stopped concentrating for even a few minutes, we might never find our way back.
Confidence did not arrive overnight. It grew through repetition, hands-on work, curiosity and the patience of people willing to share what they knew. One of the greatest advantages I had was working with experienced vendors and mentors who explained not only what they were building but why.
That remains my first recommendation to anyone entering the Microsoft 365 world: find a mentor and stay connected to your professional community. Even experienced practitioners are still learning. None of us has to navigate the whole landscape alone.
Move from building systems to stewarding information
My time at Archives New Zealand shifted the central question from 'How do we build the site?' to 'How do we manage information properly?' That change sounds subtle but it transforms implementation decisions.
Retention, disposal, accountability, metadata, governance and long-term access cannot sit separately from technology. They have to be translated into system structures, workflows and practical guidance. Yet compliance also has to coexist with usability. If controls are too rigid, people work around them; if they are too loose, the organisation carries unnecessary risk.
The best systems make the compliant behaviour the easiest behaviour. That requires information professionals to bridge the 'why' of governance and the 'how' of design without overburdening the people doing the work.
Good architecture is almost invisible
A later role in an EDRMS environment gave me an unexpected education in structure. I worked through a master spreadsheet from A to Z, validating every site, owner, business area and piece of metadata. It initially felt like an enormous maintenance task. In reality, it taught me how digital environments are designed, governed and sustained beneath the surface.
Those lessons transferred directly into SharePoint. Good information architecture creates clarity. When it is working, people can find information, navigation feels intuitive and governance is manageable. When it is weak, the environment wobbles no matter how impressive the technology looks.
Architecture begins with listening: understanding business functions, information flows, responsibilities and the language people use. The structure should reflect the work not force every team into an abstract model they cannot recognise.
Migration is a reset point, not a removalist job
Contracting exposed me to organisations with very different histories, cultures, risk appetites, technical debt and levels of governance maturity. It also showed me the limitations of lift-and-shift migration.
Moving content as-is may look efficient but it can transfer years of duplication, ambiguity and unmanaged material into a shiny new platform. Anyone who has followed a path such as 'Old - Archive - New Archive - Final Archive - Misc' only to find a lunch menu from 2004 beside critical business records knows the problem. Migration gives an organisation a rare opportunity to understand what it holds, reduce risk and establish better behaviours. The goal should not be to move everything quickly. It should be to move what matters, well.
People make governance work
Large SharePoint implementations require technical capability but they succeed through collaboration. Information Management, IT, architecture, privacy, security, risk, project teams, leadership and the business all see different parts of the challenge. They need shared decisions and continuous communication not a handover at the end.
Information professionals often become trainers, analysts, advisors, translators and occasionally informal therapists. We listen to pressures and habits, interpret formal obligations and reshape them into something workable. That does not mean abandoning governance. It means designing governance so it can function in everyday work.
No solution can simply be copied from one organisation to another. Good IM work is not perfection in the abstract; it is progress in context. When people understand what they are being asked to do, trust the environment and can see how it supports their work, SharePoint becomes more than a platform. It becomes part of a sustainable information culture.
We are all on the same waka
Technology will continue to evolve and Microsoft 365 will continue to expand. The strongest foundations remain mentorship, thoughtful architecture, professional community, adaptability and a willingness to keep learning.
After all these years, the most important SharePoint lesson I can offer is simple: meet people where they are. Build with them not merely for them. That is how compliant, useful and trusted information environments take hold.
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