This is a big topic at the moment that came out of SharePoint Fest in DC last month. It comes with this pretty bar graph to give everyone an idea as to where people believe the success is measured.
Coming in Last is other … would love to know who that one person is and what the other was. I mean if it’s one thing, just list it right?
Second from the bottom is costs. Not sure this makes sense to me, are people walking around saying “My Intranet cost me three million dollars, it’s the best!” Please introduce me to those people, I would love to spend their money for them. Not sure how anyone can use cost as a measure for success.
In 4th place is Impact. Impact may or may not last, and it also might be positive or negative, either way again it is not something that should be used as a measure for success on its own, and would need to be accompanied with productivity or ROI to understand more.
For the first step on the podium we have Engagement, which is probably third because engagement alone doesn’t mean people are using it properly. It’s kind of like my kids watching a Pixar movie, they are totally engaged but miss the jokes for the adults and therein lies the beauty. Which brings me to what I would believe the winner should be, instead of the actual winner.
Productivity comes in 2nd place and while it should be first as it is the reason you need adoption, because it increases productivity, we can go back and forth as to which comes first, but I rather have higher productivity than high adoption and lower productivity.
Still in number one slot, el Grande, Adoption takes the cake, it’s a big buzz word these days and gets thrown around a lot, but let’s not forget the reason why adoption is critical as explained in my productivity should have won moan.
All of the top 4 are important to me, I would still love to know what the “Other” is. However how do you get these numbers, how do you tell if your people are using the product effectively, and the answer is simply SharePoint Vitals a great free tool to measure the SharePoint site usage, user adoption and overall success of your intranet. So go get it, it’s free.