How to sell a "Sharepoint Developer"?

Question

I am working in a company with huge DotNet team. We currently have MOSS 2007 license which I assume is a costly one and just one administrator working/maintaining all Sharepoint stuff.

I felt that Sharepoint is not being utilized to its potential. Being interested in Sharepoint Development for past 1 year (I am a .NET Developer with 6 years of exp) I offered my help to our Director, his first question was

"Why do I need a Sharepoint Developer?"

Now I need help in selling a "Sharepoint Developer" to my director.

I would be glad to provide any more information you need about the company or current utilization.

EDIT: Just want to elaborate more on my company's scenario. We have sharepoint being used mostly for Internal use like Raising Service Tickets, Maintaining Networking Stuff ( Servers, Sites, clients details), Document Sharing with Clients.

Answer 1

If you want the official “value proposition” of SharePoint, it goes something like this; the product already has a lot of common application behaviours built into it (doc management, access control, search, etc) therefore it streamlines development by being able to build directly on top of these features rather than building them from scratch. It’s a .NET based environment so your current developers can leverage existing skills.

However, it’s not all that simple. There’s a very solid learning curve, you need to develop directly on a Windows Server and the lifecycle and deployment of apps if very different to ASP.NET. Have a read of What are your biggest complaints about Sharepoint? and also The hidden costs of building on enterprise software platforms.

Answer 2

Ask him how much time your team spends coding/planning/worrying with:

• Authentication
• Security
• Document Management
• Versioning / Change History
• Records Management (on a very light sense)
• Backup / Restore support
• Load balance
• Multi domain support
• Separated Content Databases
• Content Collaboration and user-created structures
• Theme support
• Syndication
• Outlook integration
• ??

And how much time you ACTUALLY worry/code/plan implementing your BUSINESS RULES

SharePoint is far from perfect, but in a .NET world it is a hell of a good start to get things done without reinventing the wheel.

Answer 3

Why do you think you need a sharepoint developer? What can more/better sharepoint development offer from a business perspective? Does it do thinks either faster, cheaper or better than you currently do them? You need to be able to verbalize this for management to buy-in.

Answer 4

Does the existing administrator have a technical background? Perhaps as a developer? If not, then yes, there is value in having a "Sharepoint Developer" handy as soon as you want to do anything even remotely outside the box in SharePoint.

Want to extend the functionality of your lists/libraries? You'll need to know how to create a CustomAction in .NET, or know how to combine JavaScript/JQuery with ASP.NET webservices to do so.

Want to create some custom rollups for reporting? Do you folks track tasks/project information in SharePoint? You'll need to understand ASP.NET server control fundamentals, and possibly XSL so that you can whip something together using SharePoint designer.

Maybe you want to standardize your content (calendars, tasks, etc.) through custom content types. You'll need a development background to understand how to provision this using SharePoint's solution/feature mechanisms.

Or perhaps your director would be interested in reporting? If you pick up a third-party reporting tool such as Dundas Charts, good luck making anything remotely complex without having a development background.

These are just some things off the top of my head..

Answer 5

Point out the business benefits that your company would IMMEDIATELY derive by doing / going Sharepoint. In your spare time at the office, create a proof of concept perhaps that you could parody with your director in able to get his/her nod.

Answer 6

As someone who once was a sharepoint developer, it is hard to add value to that product. It will mostly be cosmetic changes or something you find to be really cool, but at the end of the day SP already provides the functionality. Also if you do something amazing with it M$ will eat your lunch.

Answer 7

I worked on MS CMS (which preceded MOSS) and the people who stuck with MOSS are earning good money - but proving business benefits to the skeptical is very difficult.

To sell yourself to your director you need to demonstrate that MOSS will either save the company money or help generate extra cash. From your brief company description I would reckon that cost focus is the way forward.

So ask your boss what are the three biggest cost savings that your company wants to make in the next year (there is always a focus) and (if you think it is worth asking) the three areas where the company is looking to expand.

Then go away and work out how MOSS (or any enterprise level CMS for that matter) can support and possibly improve the chance of meeting these objectives. If you can do that and present the director with some focused, manageable projects then you may be on the way.