This presentation was given by Alexander Meijers as part of the Sparked Toolkit Session: SharePoint Nightmares. It discusses the boundaries of SharePoint when it comes to customizations.

1. How far should you go?
SHAREPOINT CUSTOMIZATIONS

2. Do you recognize yourself?
 Yes, we are building everything our selves!
 We are deviating from the standards
 We say too often “SharePoint? Yes it can!”
 We have complicated the design

3. Reality check!
 Not delivering what the customer asked
 Too complicated system
 Performance issues
 Over budget
 SharePoint gets a bad name
Know the product its limits!

5. First step to disaster
 Communication
 Lack of it
 Assumptions
 No documentation
• Lesson learned
 Communicate!! It is not that hard!
 Document everything
 Say NO to your customer
 Customer sessions

6. Second step to disaster
 The data model
 Over designed the system
 Based on relational databases
 Mapped to Content Types and Lists
 Multi-tier solution implementation
• Lessons learned
 Do not threat Lists as a database table
 Check if you need to store the data in SharePoint or
another location
 Do I really need all those tiers?
 Keep it stupid simple

7. Third step to disaster
 Implementation
 Only focus on the presentation and not on maintaining
the content
 Not using out-of-the box functionality
 Developers only know their piece
 No code documentation
• Lessons learned
 Try to use as much as possible out-of-the box
 Think of Content management, Security and
Search from the beginning
 Document your code

8. Fourth step to disaster
 Everything else
 Migration? No, lets wait till we finish the Portal
 Not cooperation with the other parties
• Lessons learned
 Do NOT under estimate migration
 Be a team for the customer! We are one! There is
no you!

9. My information
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ameijers
Blog: http://www.bloggix.com/blogs/microsoft
User group: http://www.dutchsug.nl
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/alexandermeijers

10. Questions?