I have been lucky enough to share my experiences, lessons learned, and advice through various contributions to the community. This page represents a collected listing of many of those contributions to make discovery and referring back to them easier.

Looking for something specific? Due to the length of this page, to make navigating it a bit easier, use these quick links:

1. Books
2. Articles & Whitepapers
3. Podcasts & Interviews
4. Recorded Webinars
5. Open Research
6. On This Blog

Books

What follows are books I have contributed to:

Microsoft SharePoint For Business Executives: Q&A Handbook

Forget lengthy technical SharePoint guides more suited for hands-on technical staff; get equipped with the knowledge of SharePoint’s business potential before deployment.

Get to grips with SharePoint governance, the Cloud, staffing, development and much more from a business perspective in this book and e-book.

An essential SharePoint Pocket Guide with useful Q&As for every business executive deliberating over SharePoint implementation.

Articles & Whitepapers

Often when asked by a client, colleague or peer in my industry for my thoughts repeatedly on a subject I try to distill them in the form of articles or whitepapers. What follows are a few of the articles and contributions I have made.

• Whitepaper: SharePoint Governance: A Definitive Guide
  Read our white paper to understand best practices and strategies necessary for planning and enforcing governance policies for Microsoft SharePoint.
• Whitepaper: Tough Migration Decisions – Making The Right Choices
  SharePoint content migration can be a potentially risky, time consuming, and costly endeavor if you don’t understand the pitfalls and best practices. This whitepaper breaks down the key decisions you must face and provides practical tips to effectively plan for your migration. It includes 200+ questions you should ask your SharePoint migration vendor.
• SCM: Ensure The Long-Term Health Of SharePoint Content Management Systems
  Prescribing a SharePoint implementation without a proper diagnosis is akin to IT malpractice.That’s the assertion of Richard Harbridge, a SharePoint architect and consultant for Portal Solutions of Rockville, Md. Harbridge presented a SharePoint content management tutorial called “Is Your SharePoint Really Healthy? What’s the Right Prescription?” at KMWorld 2012 in Washington, D.C. There, he suggested that the collaboration platform required a governed model of care to ensure ongoing health.
• KMWorld: SharePoint 2013 – a new way to work together?
  According to the Microsoft SharePoint product website, “SharePoint 2013 is the new way to work together.” So what is so new about SharePoint 2013? Will it really change how we work together? The short answer is no, probably not for the readers of an article like this. However, the longer answer (for many people) is that it may make their jobs a little easier, and those who haven’t really invested heavily in SharePoint might want to take another look.
• FPWeb Whitepaper: On Premise vs. Cloud – SharePoint Hosting ROI Comparison
  Internationally recognized SharePoint experts Richard Harbridge and Sadie Van Buren team up to deliver an in depth analysis of the three major methods of implementing SharePoint. Compare the true cost of ownership and learn how to achieve the strongest return on investment for your SharePoint deployment by downloading this free white paper now.
• ESJ: Q&A – Integrating SharePoint With Social Content
  When planning your enterprise social strategy, you must consider how your organization will integrate internal social activities with existing technology investments and processes. When social technology is implemented without an effective strategy and without effective integration, social information often can become isolated from the business processes and activities that would benefit most. This means that your investment isn’t resulting in as strong of a return, especially over longer periods of time.What should be integrated with that ubiquitous enterprise application, SharePoint? What are the benefits of such integration, and what does it take? We asked Richard Harbridge, a senior SharePoint architect/evangelist with Portal Solutions for his perspective.
• SCM: The Future of Email – Collaboration Experts On New Social Media Tools
  Email is one technology that spurs a great deal of discussion in the world of content management. The ubiquitous communication technology has inspired many discussions about how it will hold up against evolving enterprise collaboration initiatives and new social media tools. Still, most organizations use email and among workers it enjoys a comfortable familiarity that’s hard to foster with newer collaborative applications...
• Focus: Best Practices For Using Microsoft SharePoint In An Enterprise
  Microsoft SharePoint enables enterprises to set up Web sites, share information with one another, manage documents and publish reports. With an estimated presence in 50 to 60 percent of all large organizations, SharePoint is in widespread use. So, how can your enterprise get the most out of SharePoint and its collaboration features? In this guide, Focus Experts Paul Culmsee, Richard Harbridge, Veronique Palmer, Michal Pisarek, James Pritz and Michael Sampson share their top 8 best practices for using Microsoft SharePoint in an enterprise.
• CMSWire: The Five Teams You Need For Effective SharePoint Governance
  In this article, I hope to give you some practical structure and tactics you can use to achieve effective SharePoint governance.
• NBSP: Evaluating Cloud Providers
  Struggling with evaluating cloud providers? Interested in moving to the cloud but not certain what the risks are and what you need to consider? This article is focused around sharing some tools and techniques I have found to help when performing the often difficult task of comparing or evaluating cloud providers.
• NBSP: SharePoint is not a Silver Bullet
  Every day we see projects and business challenges that SharePoint helps us overcome. It’s kind of hard not to begin reactively saying “SharePoint” as the answer to so many corporate challenges especially as our understanding of what the platform can do matures. This poses a very real danger as SharePoint is not the best tool or solution for every challenge.
• NBSP: Powerful Columns You Probably Didn’t Know About
  Often I am surprised by how few businesses know about some of the powerful columns based on SharePoint’s publishing features. In this article not only will we highlight what these are, but we will also explore why they are powerful and useful columns that you really should consider leveraging.
• NBSP: Why Leveraging SharePoint Blog Features For Intranet News Is A Great Idea
  Almost every intranet site has news articles of some sort. One very useful technique when building out your news articles in SharePoint is to use a blog site to host them.
• NBSP: Manage Web Part Permissions and Information
  A quick post highlighting two important aspects about SharePoint WebParts, and the WebPart Gallery (for SharePoint 2007 AND 2010).
• SCM: Don’t Let Performance Anxiety Derail Your SharePoint 2010 Installation
  SharePoint 2010 has been making steady gains as the enterprise collaboration platform of choice. However, many potential end users remain resistant. The problem: performance issues that result in excruciating waits for pages to load or service interruptions at critical times...
• Redmond Mag: What To Expect In SharePoint 15
  It’s no surprise that Microsoft SharePoint is among the most widely deployed platforms for enterprise collaboration, with more than 125 million licenses sold to more than 65,000 enterprise customers. Right now, though, the mystery is all about what to expect from the next major release — and that’s rapidly starting to unravel. Microsoft recently released the first technology preview of the forthcoming upgrade, code-named “SharePoint 15,” to selected testers, and the company is gunning for a general beta release this summer. And while Microsoft isn’t saying, observers are betting on a commercial release by year’s end or in early 2013.
• SCM: SharePoint 2010 Adoption; If You Deploy It, Will Your Users Come? (Requires Sign Up)
  SharePoint’s success in the market can be attributed largely to its ease of use, according to Richard Harbridge, senior SharePoint evangelist at Allin Corp., a Boston-based consulting and IT services firm…
• SCM: Successful SharePoint 2010 Deployment Relies On Six Key Steps (Requires Sign Up)
  As more and more companies deploy Microsoft SharePoint 2010, it is becoming increasingly clear that successful use of the complex collaboration platform requires careful management…
• SCM: SharePoint 2010 collaboration ISVs focus on workflow and analytics. (Requires Sign Up)
  With 125 million licenses sold, Microsoft’s SharePoint is the market leader for enterprise collaboration, but it doesn’t solve every business problem for every user. Instead, many SharePoint 2010 collaboration platform users rely on a host of independent software vendors (ISVs) to handle what SharePoint can’t...
• Focus: Collaboration Best Practices: What are your 3 tips for using Microsoft Sharepoint in an Enterprise?
• Focus: What are alternatives to MS SharePoint?
• Focus: How does Box.net compare to SharePoint?
• Focus: What is the Best Practice for configuring SharePoint to hold policy and process documentation?
• Focus: What are the Consequences of Changing your SharePoint Governance Model?
• Focus: What questions should be asked when planning a SharePoint intranet?
• Focus: How do you prevent scope creep on a complicated IT project?
• Focus: K-12 Enteprise – need to set up SharePoint (fast/cheap) – in house or Office 365?
• Focus: Some elements of “dream jobs” are universal (e.g: pay). What are some of your unique elements?

Podcasts & Interviews

What follows are some of the podcasts and interviews I have done.

Panel Videos

• Share Panel – Real World SharePoint Governance
  This SHARE 2012 panel explores the importance of SharePoint Governance within an organization and dive into real world scenarios that the panelists have seen on their journeys within SharePoint projects from both a consultancy and employee perspective. Moderated by Jeremy Thake, Enterprise Architect – Microsoft SharePoint MVP, AvePoint, Inc. and panelists include Sarah Haase, Best Buy, Susan Hanley, Susan Hanley LLC, Richard Harbridge, Allin Consulting, and Adam Quinn, Nielsen.

Audio Interviews

• The SharePoint Pod Show: Building a SharePoint Team
  In Episode 69 of the SharePoint Pod Show, Rob, Nick, and Brett catch up with Richard Harbridge to discuss how to best build a SharePoint team in your organization.
• The MOSS Show: Richard Harbridge Gets Us App’d
  In between sessions at the Share conference, Richard Harbridge speaks to us about 3rd party add-ons for SharePoint, the new App model and how to think about it differently and what is might mean living in an ‘App’ world in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online.
• The MOSS Show: Upgrading with Richard Harbridge
  In preparation for his upcoming Share Conference session, in this episode we dive into all kinds of upgrade-related topics with Richard Harbridge, ranging from some of the technical and business planning required to a number of super-user related tasks and responsibilities. We talk about Upgrade Evaluation sites, budgets, collaboration with IT, managing the user expectations and tons more.
• The MOSS Show: Helping Assess ROI With SharePoint
  In this episode, SharePoint expert Richard Harbridge helps us to understand and think about assessing the return on investment (ROI) of or SharePoint platform. We talk about why ROI is important, different ways to measure, and how to improve this over time.
• ECM Talk 12: Richard Harbridge on Information Architecture in SharePoint
  Richard Harbridge and James Lappin discuss information architecture issues within SharePoint.
• Roundtable: SharePoint In The Cloud: Evaluating Impact, Pros, and Cons
  Microsoft has unleashed their cloud strategy and Office 365 is now publically available (as of July). What does this mean for organizations using SharePoint today? How can organizations leverage the Microsoft cloud effectively with their SharePoint implementations and future SharePoint Strategies?
• SharePoint Ninja “Meet The Community”: Interview With Richard Harbridge
  In an informal interview Michael and I discuss some of the challenges in the community, how to share and contribute more, and thoughts on SharePoint in general.

Video Interviews

• Legal Technology Insights: The Ins & Outs Of SharePoint
  When it comes to SharePoint, there is no one better to talk to at the ILTA show that Richard Harbridge…  We sit down with Richard to talk about some of the emerging roles in the Legal field as they pertain to technology and how firms should approach their enterprise content management strategy.
• Inside Legal: SharePoint Trends – Richard Harbridge
  InsideLegal’s Jobst Elster talks with the keynote speaker of the ILTA SharePoint Symposium, Richard Harbridge with Allin Consulting about SharePoint trends.
• MYSP.TV: Richard Harbridge
  MYSP.TV is the place for up to the minute information and insight on SharePoint. Regular MYSP.TV episodes will provide a number of articles across the entire realm of SharePoint, from subject matter experts, local SharePoint events and happenings across the country.
• AvePoint: Faces Of The Global SharePoint Community: Richard Harbridge
  Richard Harbridge, Senior SharePoint Evangelist at Allin Consulting, speaks with AvePoint about his origins with SharePoint and the global community.
• NothingButSharePoint: What is Governance to you?
  A brief video where I outline my thoughts on Governance and talk with my hands far too much.
• Harmon.ie: Expert Tips and Tricks: Interview for Webcast
  After a brief introduction I answer “Why does SharePoint suck?” and what we will be talking about in the webinar, and my thoughts on Harmon.ie.
• Microsoft: Social Technology, Communications, and Concepts for Marketing
  In a move away from traditional marketing, Microsoft partner Richard Harbridge discusses the many ways they use social media to help grow their business.
• Axceler: The One Thing – Richard Harbridge – Governance
  Richard Harbridge, Senior SharePoint Evangelist at Allin Consulting (@RHarbridge) shares his thoughts on the one thing people need to know about SharePoint 2010. This is part of ‘The One Thing’ video series produced by Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet) and the Axceler team.
• Richard Harbridge Reacts to Global360 SharePoint Survey Results
  Richard Harbridge at Allin Consulting shares insights on SharePoint as he comments on results of Global 360′s “How are Businesses using Microsoft SharePoint in the Enterprise? Market Survey 2010″ Get full survey results report at http://www.global360.com/download/sharepoint-survey
• Dux: What @RHarbridge would do if SharePoint never existed.
• Richard Harbridge with Rita Arrigo at Share2011
  When 300 SharePoint Business Users got together at Share2011 in Manly, Richard Harbridge de-mystified governance strategies. Here Richard Harbridge discusses SharePoint Governance with Rita Arrigo (@rarrigo).

Webinars

What follows are free (and available to the public) webinar recordings.

• Future Proofing Your SharePoint Strategy
• Practical Perspectives on Dealing with SharePoint Complexity
• Harmon.ie: Expert Tips and Tricks For Increasing SharePoint Document Management, Usability and User Adoption
• The Steps To Effective SharePoint Governance (Previous Version Of Presentation)
• The Seven Most Important SharePoint Success Factors (Previous Version Of Presentation)
• SharePoint Integration and Interoperability: What You Need To Know (Previous Version Of Presentation)

Open Research

As an independent (volunteer) researcher I implore you to write using this data, gather and share insights from this data, and apply the data here to help improve your own organizations decision making or the decision making of your clients. The purpose of this research is to share real data based on observations, interviews, studies, and work I have conducted.

• What Is SharePoint?
  When asked repeatedly “what is SharePoint?” the responses we provide always seem to be different. Contained within this page is the (relatively) up to date set of responses I have been able to collect both physically and virtually. As new responses come in I will both update this with more analysis and will share the results.
• SharePoint Research: On Premise, Hosted, and SaaS Implementation Costs
  After interviewing over 30 SharePoint professional service firms and 20 internal SharePoint administrators across North America a compiled research report and set of data was created to compare on premise SharePoint implementation costs (based on 6 scenarios) with hosted and cloud based SharePoint costs. The purpose of this partial research data is to provide a defensible baseline for determining whether the cloud, or on premise is the correct cost effective decision for the organization evaluating their options.

On This Blog

Sometimes it is difficult to navigate a blog. To give one more way of finding highlighted resources I have listed many resources found on this blog along with a short explanation of the primary purpose behind each resource.

1. SharePoint Governance Policies, Plans, and Documents Listing:
   As part of another ongoing effort I share and highlight useful templates/Governance documents and samples that are available to the public. Many of these templates have been scrubbed from my clients or work.
2. User Adoption Activity Listing:
   The user adoption activities listing is a collection of effective activities organizations employ to bolster adoption of their Intranets, Portals, or Applications. This is by no means a complete list, but hopefully will suggest some ideas around activities that other organizations have found to be successful in bolstering user adoption and engagement.
3. Intranet Component Listing:
   This list contains components commonly found on Intranets (in particular on landing pages, homepages, and frequently used pages of Intranets). In my work I have been lucky enough to have worked with, implemented or been involved in over a hundred Intranets and this is one of the many tools I use to help plan for and tactically implement different pages.
4. Intranet Design/Homepage Examples
   A collection of Intranet designs/examples taken from various internet sites (to my knowledge all of the designs here are SharePoint Intranets).
5. SharePoint Workflows: What Should We Use It For? What Are Other People Using It For?
   We all know that we should always aim to automate and improve our business processes more. Many organizations reap enormous benefits from improving the way they work alone or with other people through enabling technologies like SharePoint. The big question is how do we start? Or perhaps which processes or workflows should we automate and improve first? This article dives into this issue and offers advice and recommendations based on successful experiences with many customers.
6. SharePoint Glossary:
   This is a list of relevant SharePoint terms and what they mean. The goal of this list is to make understanding SharePoint terminology easier for end users and those just starting with SharePoint.
7. SharePoint Standards:
   An ongoing project to maintain a listing of specific standards that the industry agrees to as a baseline for achieving effective SharePoint implementations. This contains the standards, templates, and examples for many areas of SharePoint and is often a frequently used Governance resource.
8. SharePoint 2007 vs SharePoint 2010:
   An extremely popular resource on my blog that highlights and outlines the differences between SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 on a single (very long) page.
9. How to: Lock Down Social Features in SharePoint 2010
   One of the more popular How to: articles based on interest in rolling out SharePoint 2010′s social features in a planned way and disabling or mitigating the risk/cost some pose.
10. Eight Key Considerations When Implementing SharePoint 2010 Social Capabilities
    There is a minimum of eight things that every company should carefully consider when rolling out features like MySites, User Profiles, Tags, Notes, Activity Feeds, and Blogs. This article outlines why each consideration is important and in some cases provide an example of how you might begin dealing with that consideration effectively.

If you have a request for research or for a piece of writing please feel free to comment here or contact me via LinkedIn or email me at Richard@RHarbridge.com.

Hope there is a way I can help you,
Richard Harbridge