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.
