Even Sharepoint needs an information Architecture

Recently, we were asked whether a design process for information architecture is required for a Sharepoint implementation. After all, Sharepoint is "ready", right? This question reveals the gap in understanding of enterprise content management (ECM), or perhaps, the degree to which an easy way out is preferred over conscious planning. This isn't a Microsoft Sharepoint problem. It's a problem with the mystique created around IT itself. Corporate leaders and managers have come to believe that thinking about their own jobs and accountability is an IT problem. True to form, when it goes wrong, "the system" gets the blame. MILLIONS WASTED It is not uncommon to find a leadership group concluding that the IT department bought the wrong system. Millions spent are written off, and millions more spent on a new system. The same result. Cautionary note: among world class ECM systems, all deliver essentially the same functionality with "fit" being a matter of compatibility with your existing environment. That fit is about the split between configuration and customization, not about core functionality. No ECM, not even SharePoint, provides turnkey solutions to your needs out of the box. It is the purchaser who must know what they want to achieve, understand that in relation to the IT product, and deliver a result that represents best value in relation to the desired functionality, the approach to configuration and adoption of clearly justified and fully articulated needs for customization. Information Architecture enables a central source of knowledge about what exists, why and with what relationship to business needs. In the IRM Strategies model, it is a structure on which capturing, tagging and storing content can support management of content in accord with its value, risk and compliance requirements as well as access and searching (findability). The best case scenario grounds achievement of desired outcomes through confident access to captured knowledge that serves a range of corporate needs in a legally defensible way. The problem with Sharepoint is not that it doesn't meet important criteria for records management (it doesn't, as Microsfot acknowledges). The real problem is that IT departments are quick to support its relative ease of implemetation and off-load responsibility onto managers who install it locally, exchanging a strategic enterprise resource management capability for a strategically distributed roll-out cost that builds, rather than bridges, silos. If you think that a "knowledge portal" and a "folksonomy" will overcome the problem, well, you've been listening to the wrong "experts".