Reviews Written By :
MikeW
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My own Sharepoint 2007 book came out recently and so I have been constantly checking the Amazon US "hit parade" to see how it's been doing.
Well it's doing OK, but the book which at the moment seems to be selling in vast quantities is this MOSS 2007 Best Practices book.
Now I'll admit that before I got a copy for myself I was hard put to understand why. After all this was a book by the two people (Bill English and Ben Curry) who had (organised or) written the two existing Sharepoint Administrator Books from Microsoft Press - the massive (and, through the many authors, slightly unbalanced) Administrator's Companion and the small, but full of quality information "Administrator's Pocket Consultant - so what else could there be in this one ?
Actually there's a lot because this is probably a completely different book to any of the - by now almost 100 - SharePoint 2007 books that have gone before.
It's probably the first one that you can **and should** read without having a computer handy.
The book doesn't concentrate on teaching you how to do things - which is naturally what most of the other books do - but instead concentrates on making you THINK. Think, that is, about your options BEFORE you do things.
The other thing I've noticed is that it's the kind of book where you can dive into a topic that's maybe only a part of a section of a chapter and read just that and you will have learned something useful.
My favorite example of that is the few pages in the Document Management chapter that discuss whether or not you should use SharePoint (document libraries) as a replace for a File Server system. First there's the single line with the answer (No) but that's followed by some indication of what could be moved and what not and why. These are inter-spaced with several in-boxes containing examples from the real-world - one of which to my delight (and this IS a Microsoft Press book) actually suggested that in certain circumstances you should keep your non-Microsoft application and NOT move to SharePoint 2007!
In fact the only thing I found to object to in that section of the text was the fact that whereas "SharePoint Server" had been given its "2007" to complete the product name (unnecessary - there isn't any other "SharePoint Server"), Windows SharePoint Services had been left without it's (essential) "3.0". This comment, however, is rather like the car tests of old where the car was highly praised in all essential details but for balance it was mentioned that the ash tray was badly located!
The only other aspect I have a problem with is that it is 800 pages thick. As it's the kind of book that in my opinion you should carry around with you and just read bits of in odd moments, it's a pity that it's not thinner and lighter and is instead the size and weight of book that is more suited to being permanently located on the desk next to the computer.
Microsoft Press France actually did make two volumes out of the 1000 page Administrator's Companion when they created the French language translation of that, so it's possible and it's a pity to my mind that Microsoft Press US didn't make two volumes out of this. It would need those two 400 page volumes because there is good stuff throughout, but to my mind this book cries out to be as easy to carry around as the Pocket Consultant is and it isn't.
Maybe they are planning a Kindle version. That would at least help US readers take this "book" with them everywhere. |
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Reviews Written By :
J. Lindstrom
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When deploying SharePoint, it is critical to plan for not only what you need now, but for how it will grow and scale down the road, especially when Document Management is involved. If you don't plan adequately for searchability, scalability, or disaster recovery, you can easily run into problems.
One criticism I have had of many SharePoint books is that they are written from a technical perspective and explain how to install and configure SharePoint, but they gloss over the critical planning stages or the best practices for scalability.
As the name of this book indicates, this is a very thorough guide covering the best practices for planning, deploying, optimizing, and organizing SharePoint. This book is not necessarily intended to give you step-by-step instructions for installing SharePoint, but rather cover the full lifecycle of a SharePoint deployment and give you best practice recommendations. The layout and organization of the book is very logical, making it easy to quickly find what you are looking for. It covers both Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and MOSS 2007. It is written to be accessible by anyone on a team evaluating or implementing SharePoint, or anyone who just wants to learn more about it.
The book is broken into the following sections:
Introduction--includes an overview of the various SharePoint Technologies, how to determine which you need, and how SharePoint will help your business.
Part I--Planning--This is not just about planning for the IT infrastructure, but more about planning for the impact that SharePoint will have on your organization, such as dealing with push-back from users after moving away from shared folders to SharePoint document libraries and breaking down departmental "information kingdoms."
Part II--Building--This section gets into best practices for building your environment, including content management strategies, the role of custom development, and dev and test environments, including replication of content between environments.
Part III--Deploying--This section has a great discussion about organizing your content and search/crawling strategy to optimize searchability for your content, security of content, business intelligence, and intranet/extranet/internet deployment scenarios.
Part IV--Operating--This section has great tips on availability, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and performance monitoring.
What I appreciated most about this book is it is very readable and does not include a lot of "fluff," just straightforward best practices. For example, in Chapter 8, the section on should SharePoint replace file servers is very straightforward about the limitation of SharePoint and when file servers should still be used.
If you are someone new to SharePoint or a System Administrator charged with deploying SharePoint, this book may leave you wanting more--it is not designed to be a how-to book; however, it does include many good recommendations for additional resources.
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Reviews Written By :
Javier Loria
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My review may be biased, because I really enjoyed this book.
This book is well written and instead of directly heading to the technical aspects of Sharepoint, it goes and starts with the problems that are most likely to kill a Sharepoint project: change resistance, politics and conflict management.
However it doesn't stop there. The book digs deep into every aspect of a SharePoint project lifecycle from envisioning to deployment. This book is a must read for software architects.
PROS:
1) Full of effective recommendations on how to get the most of SharePoint.
2) Solid advice on how to manage SharePoint projects.
CON:
1)It may be overwhelming to new SharePoint players. If you are new to SharePoint consider reading the chapters relevant in each phase of the project.
2) If you are looking for technical depth and how-to practices, you won't find them here.
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Reviews Written By :
Marie Gray
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This is a Must-read for anyone in a SharePoint role. It is written for both technical personnel and business value reviews. Great strategic advice, insightful use of experience. Way to go, Microsoft Press! If this series continues as well written as this book, it should be awesome. |
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Reviews Written By :
Sujan Turlapaty
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This is a must-have book for any serious SharePoint administrators. The topics are well laid out and the authors provide excellent explanations. Examples and authors insight into various topics are very valuable. I definitely recommend this book for any SharePoint Administrator during the early phases of any SharePoint implementation. The Best Practices suggested by the authors would definitely help you to deploy a successful SharePoint solution.
The Companion CD contains sample project plan, project charter, DDoc etc that are very useful to SharePoint Administrators. |
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