SharePoint 2010 projects are kicking off and preparations are being made at a furious pace in organizations around the world to upgrade, upgrade, Upgrade! Many clients, colleagues and friends have brought the topic of upgrading by the end of this calendar year to my attention recently and they usually ask, "What is the single most important thing I can do to prepare?" I have spoken to this question a lot lately, and with the end of year deadline so near, many of you have caused me to daydream just a bit... 

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens has been amazingly popular since its release in the early 1840's. If you aren't familiar with the story, it is essentially a tale of several ghosts that lead an older man through a series of visions that cause him to change his ways. Hmm, we may have something to learn from a Christmas Carol as we consider our march toward end of year upgrades to SharePoint. Think I'm crazy? 

SharePoint upgrades have many up front decision points and checks to be completed to gauge our preparedness. We even have an improved installer in 2010 that performs some of these checks as it progresses and that can be restarted if we have to go off and fix something. However, there are some checks we should be making back in the shadows areas of our environments that some will miss or even avoid. Let's allow the ghosts take us on a journey and see what these areas are... 

The first visitor we encounter is the Ghost of SharePoint Past. He is barely perceptible; just a lingering memory that comes to us out of the haze of implementations experienced long ago. He holds in his hand a project charter, a set of requirements and the goals of original installations. But why should we dwell on this? We have a deadline to meet by the end of the year! Well, better we allow the ghost to remind us of our original user requests and requirements than the users themselves after we've begun our latest system upgrade. What will the users say if we upgrade to yet another version without considering the items we left behind last time around, promising we would get to them in the future? Have we forgotten them entirely? Did you jettison the BI initiative, leave Excel Services turned off, never implement Forms Services, ignore My Sites or be forced to reduce your scope in other ways, and never have the opportunity to go back? Let's be sure to look at those areas, talk with users and make sure we're building our new system with these needs in mind. That way, we'll progress toward a Holiday filled with goodies and leave the coal behind! 

Our second visitor is the Ghost of SharePoint Present. She is much more visible since we see her every day, in our portal, our departmental site, or team site. In our planning of the technical details of an upgrade we may miss the challenges faced by our administrators and users every day. We shouldn't view a system upgrade as a panacea. If there are ills in our governance and management of the system now, the new system will not correct those issues and could very well make them worse. Are policies and procedures in place that allow the administration of these systems effectively? Do you have control of site sprawl?  Are power users being governed appropriately to prevent deployment of customizations that you have to support?  Are you insulated from constant and continuing issues with permissions? Do you provide appropriate training for users and admin's? Have you considered eDiscovery as a component of your planning? What if a lawsuit strikes and you're asked to do discovery? Are you ready with a strategy? If you're finding yourself saying no to these questions you will be well served by focusing on the Ghost of SharePoint Present. If there is ever a time to work on your governance and apply it, now is that time! Develop and apply governance, train your users and administrators and bake quality content management practices into the new system as you migrate or upgrade your SharePoint farms. It will pay off greatly over the coming months and years. 

So, on to our last visitor. The Ghost of SharePoint Future... This one likely doesn't have a vision yet to share. Which vision will you create? Bright colors and goodies on a Christmas morning, or will your SharePoint future bring a stocking filled with coal? Pretend I'm Jacob Marley, rattling the chains of governance and a musty to-do list. If you want to set the stage for a successful and well-rounded SharePoint upgrade please come to the Compass Forum on September 22nd, or drop me a line. I'd love to help you with that.