For a successful SharePoint implementation, you can’t forget the most important ingredient — getting the platform used.

If you are reading this article, it is likely because you’ve heard whining in your office or you’re tired of repeating the same message over and over to improve user adoption of your SharePoint implementation.

You may be a frustrated project manager or business champion who spent countless hours on budgeting, planning, governance, information architecture, training and timelines, only to find that the last task in your SharePoint project plan that has no due date is USER ADOPTION. And to your horror, no one is taking your words seriously and people don’t care. The bottom line is this: for you to get people to take advantage of your hard work, you have to add one more task assigned to yourself — don’t give up.

Unfortunately if thinking about "user adoption" is the last step, then you've already failed. Written by a software vendor, this article - underpinned by an assumption that the software is perfect - advises people to Break Down the Resistance, Stop the Whining and then Babysit, aka Enforce change. This approach is more than overtly paternalistic and I'm surprised they don't just recommend getting rid of the users who are blemishing the hard work of the technocrats. Part of me wonders if this attitude is just symptomatic of the Microsoft SharePoint ecosystem being geared towards software development and implementation, rather than a well rounded mix of people, process, technology and content (like we do at Headshift | Dachis Group). What do you think?

Mark Gilbert from Gartner spoke at the Gartner BI summit in Sydney recently. He said that firms shouldn't deploy collaboration software "out of the box" - I disagree, but I disagree because I'm being pedantic, although I think it is important to be so given this is a Gartner person speaking.

Overall, I think Michael is right to be pedantic. What I'm not clear from Gilbert's statement is that when he talks about the need to adapt collaboration (and social software), is he talking about actual developed customisations or customisations achieved through configuration and user-generated information architecture.

However, Gilbert also mentions SharePoint - and that does complicate things, because of the way I typically see SharePoint deployed, which is with little thought. If we read "out of the box" SharePoint to mean, you've just finished installing the software, switched it on, and announced job done then I can understand why Gilbert might be concerned.

Does this argument hold for enterprise social computing tools? It depends. Architecturally speaking, other "pure" tools of this type (by which I mean, are designed to be or have specific heritage in social software) typically have a greater resilience for dealing with organic and emergent usage. However, I would also encourage people to design for adoption anyway, remaining open to exploring customisation through both development and configuration based on user's and business needs.

Bringing me back to the beginning... you can *sometimes* deploy out of the box. But even while that might be the end of your technical activities, its only the start of the project.

BTW You can come and debate this with Michael and I at the Intranets2011 conference, where we are both presenting.

At a technology level, I was impressed. At a business engagement level, I was incredibly impressed. What Jan and Carol have created, in conjunction with in-house developers, is impressive, but what really stood out was their deep knowledge of how lawyers work, and an almost obsessive focus on getting it right - through discussions, experimentation, trying things out, seeking feedback and input from lawyers, working with people through the change process, and so on. This blog post is my standing ovation to Jan and Carol - tremendous work!

You know how I said I'm not anti-SharePoint. Well, here is a good example of what it takes to use it well. And yes, as you can see it does take some effort and time. More organisations, particularly in government, could take a leaf out their book. Note: This is about using SharePoint as a document management solution.