End Users–The Key to Your SharePoint Migration Planning
For those who may be starting to plan for the migration from SharePoint 2007 to the new SharePoint 2010 platform, something to consider is when and how to involve your end users. Your end users know their requirements, essential business processes, and data better than you do – so you most definitely need to involve them in your planning. 
My recent article, entitled “When and How to Involve End Users in SharePoint Migration Planning” (SharePointPro Connections) provides a simple overview of areas where you can include end users in the planning, design, and migration of your SharePoint environment. Far too many SharePoint deployments are a technical success, and yet an organizational failure because users don’t support the system.
Developers and administrators can strengthen overall planning and ensure that end users have a stake in the migration process and the new SharePoint environment, and the article shares ideas on how to do it. The rewards of this approach include increased user adoption rates and improved SharePoint effectiveness.
Suggestions include:
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Understand where they fit within your development methodology
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Plan to capture their feedback through multiple feedback mechanisms
- Have them help in the creation of key documentation
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Get their help in prioritizing features within the future-state environment
- Have them help you define the success metrics
For additional SharePoint migration planning, you may also be interested in an earlier article on ECM Connection, entitled 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration Planning.
