I want to move away for just a second from discussing pure SharePoint records management issues and talk a little about something I’ve become really excited about lately – namely, MIKE 2.0.
MIKE 2.0 is an information management delivery methodology developed by BearingPoint and made publically available as open source. (You can find it here.) Whole books can be written about MIKE 2.0, so I won’t go into a ton of details here. But, for what it’s worth, I think MIKE 2.0 is the best delivery methodology I’ve ever seen for developing your records management (or Enterprise Content Management) solution.
MIKE 2.0 has a lot of excellent components which can all be utilized to help your organization create a successful records management implementation, but there are two things in particular about MIKE 2.0 that really appeal to me. The first is its focus on pre-implementation analysis. Nothing you do to create a successful SharePoint records management implementation will be more important than the analysis you do prior to creating your first SharePoint site. MIKE 2.0 understands this and provides some terrific tools and guidance for managing the ‘Business Assessment’ and ‘Technology Assessment’ phases of the project.
The other aspect of MIKE 2.0 that I find so compelling is the iterative nature of the implementation phases of the project. Having worked on a number of records management implementations that used the old ‘waterfall’ delivery methods, I can tell you without hesitation that an iterative approach is a much more effective and generally successful approach to rolling out a records management solution.
If you are at the early stages of your records management implementation and have some influence on how the project will be managed, I encourage you to consider MIKE 2.0 as your delivery methodology.
April 29, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Don – thank you for your feedback on MIKE2.0. I also think these are some of the strengths of the approach and where I have had the most success on clients in establishing their information management blueprints.
One approach we have been advocating and we’re starting to see emerging more is the idea of collaborative governance (governance 2.0) http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/Governance_2.0_Solution_Offering
Are you seeing this for any sharepoint implementations?
May 1, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Sean,
Thanks for stopping by and congratulations for your part in the development of the MIKE 2.0 methodology. I believe it could be the delivery method many of us in the Records and Information Management field have been waiting for and I intend to promote it whenever I can.
As to your question, I haven’t had the opportunity to use MIKE 2.0 in a SharePoint project yet. Most of what I find compelling about MIKE 2.0 is based on seeing what worked and what didn’t work in previous implementations of a wide variety of ECM solutions. As soon as I use it in a SharePoint implementation, I will write about it here.
That being said, I can tell you there is, indeed, an overwhelming need for some kind of collaborative governance in SharePoint implementations. (I gave just one small example of this in my most recent post on the problem of SharePoint Sprawl.) Now more than ever, it is important that my clients are able to effectively control their information assets at the same time they are protecting privacy and complying with transparency and openness requirements. That is a tough beam to balance on – especially when you consider the massive volumes of information most of my clients manage. Hopefully, the Governance 2.0 solution offering can help them with that.
May 6, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Don,
That is great to hear. What I think really help is the work we are doing with AIIM in this space:
http://www.aiim.org/ResourceCenter/AIIMNews/PressReleases/article.aspx?ID=36298
http://www.slideshare.net/norwiz/how-to-implement-ecm-presentation
We hope to really improve MIKE2.0 in this area and get a really strong framework for ECM/RM.
Re: collaborative governance, we have been encouraging organizations to be collaborative in their approach to corporate/data governance. Collaborative governance would included building a measurement and analysis portal to measure the effectiveness of the pogramme and using social media technologies to replace those discussions that typically take place verbally or via email. Collaborative governance is also a way to more effectively manage op risk associated with knowledge loss.
This message has been somewhat slow to get adopted but its starting to happen and I’ve seen companies using sharepoint as the technology so its something to look out for …
May 9, 2009 at 9:24 pm
My view is that MIKE2 has lots of great big company systems integration methodology, but the fact that it has almost zero relationship to ECM or RM makes it not very useful to the work that ECM/RM integrators actually do. The further a part of MIKE2 is from ECM and RM, on topics like Business Intelligence or Data Architecture or Infrastructure Architecture and Strategy, the better it is. On Program governance and project definition, it is really good.
I went through the AIIM deck on the use of MIKE2 for ECM and RM, and I found it to be really interesting but almost completely unrelated to ECM. I believe that large ECM and RM projects are not that much like big BI or SAP projects. Who is going to ever finish this now that BeaingPoint is no more?
May 11, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Mike – I didn’t have any role in creating this deck but it does leverage a lot from MIKE2.0 so it makes sense to me.
The goal of MIKE2.0 is a common framework for “information development”, so we are trying to bring together different ways of approaching information. You’ll therefore see a common approach to BI and MDM, but definitely not to package implementations. I have personally used MIKE2.0 at big clients and small clients, and whereas I think it needs to be used a bit differently for every situation, it can work quite well.
That said, I definitely agree that MIKE2.0 is much weaker around ecm and rm due to its heritage around DW, MDM and DG. I would like to build out this area further and certainly there is a convergence of these areas.
As MIKE2.0 is a collaborative site, you are certainly welcome to add content yourself!
BearingPoint is breaking off into multiple parts – our NA PS business went to Deloitte today, PwC has an offer on the table that may close end of May for other parts of the NA business, Europe is going through a management buyout. A consortium is being formed to take over MIKE2.0.
May 14, 2009 at 1:18 am
At the risk of sounding like I have no backbone, I’m going to agree with both of you here. I find MIKE 2.0 compelling because I believe it is a great foundation for an ECM/RM delivery methodology. What excites me about it is the notion that it gives an organization a good place to start when they are in the earliest stages of an ECM/RM solution design. This is something that really wasn’t available to the general public before.
As I said in a previous post (http://sharepointrm.wordpress.com/2009/01/28/get-started-now/), I frequently see organizations get overwhelmed by the scope and complexity of a Records Management project and quit before they really even get started. One of the primary reasons for this has been a lack of guidance. They don’t know where to begin. I think MIKE 2.0 gives these organizations a framework to begin to plot their ECM or RM delivery.
With that in mind, I also believe (and always recommend) that any organization planning an ECM/RM implementation engage an experienced ECM/RM integrator to help them through the process. Now that MIKE 2.0 has been released, I will also recommend that the integrator have a proven ECM/RM delivery methodology that utilizes MIKE 2.0 along with the integrator’s own customized templates, processes and methodologies that focus specifically on ECM/RM solutions.
May 14, 2009 at 1:39 am
While I agree that a task-based methodology like MIKE2 can help someone conceptualize what it would mean to plan, design, and implement an ECM/RM solution, MIKE2 is of almost no help in this regard, because so much is hidden from view. ECM/RM is a horizontal problem – the requirements are very similar in most organizations. Therefore, the solutions are very similar in most organizations. We approach the consistency of the problem with models, artifacts, and templates. We present these to clients/users in the conceptualization phase and then work to configure and customize these models, artifacts, and templates to fit a client’s needs. The task definition in a work plan is less critical. Compare this to MIKE2 – It is all tasks and no models, artifacts and templates. If you are BearingPoint, this is no problem, because you keep all of your secret stuff behind a firewall, but MIKE2 is too big and hard to hand to a user without much training and experience or access to the deliverable libraries. And this is coming from someone who learned about Methodology from Accenture’s original Method One.
November 3, 2009 at 3:01 pm
See, I told you I was Good! So good, They named it afte me. MIKE RULES!!!!
How you doing these days?
November 4, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Hello, Mr. Taylor! I never doubted you for a minute. I always knew you would have an Information Management Delivery Methodology named after you.
)
Things are going well on this end. Just gave a presentation at ARMA on SharePoint Records Management that was well received and I’m currently working with a Federal Agency to design a major ECRM solution.
Tell everyone in Tulsa I said hello…