Depth and Breadth in a SharePoint Architect Skillset
I had a funny conversation not long ago when talking to someone who was coming from the Unix, J2EE, Novell, Solaris, that world... You know... the other side of the universe.
It went something like this, so you know SharePoint... that's great it looks like you've focused on that for some time, but you're skills are likely very narrow, specialized and specific. I didn't want to insult the person, I have a lot of respect for them. In fact they are seeing Microsoft products as simple and easy to use solutions that provide a ton of value without all the technical consulting skills and work pretty much out of the box, something that the competition doesn't usually offer.
So without laughing, I thought... I'll have to blog on the real depth and breadth that you both gain and have to learn and know to be an expert also known as a SharePoint IT Pro and Architect (minus the dev side, I'll let someone else speak to the CAML, ASP.NET, and relevant Visual Studio and C# skills). In the Microsoft infrastructure world, I'd wonder what you don't need to know...
IT Expertise:
Core
- IIS 6/7
- Windows Server 2003/2008
- DNS/WINS (Name Resolution)
- TCP/IP & other network considerations
- SQL Server 2005 Advanced Administration (Backup, Monitoring, Logshipping or Database Mirroring)
- Basic Firewall rules and Proxy
- IT Infrastructure Design
- Hardware Acquisition (RAM, CPU, Disk I/O, and other hardware considerations)
- Performance Monitoring
- Capacity Planning
- Growth Management
- Workflow (Windows Workflow Foundation)
- Client Troubleshooting & Support: IE, Firefox, Safari, Office XP, 2003, 2007, etc...
- HTML & Client side scripting (Javascript, AJAX, DHTML, XSL, XSLT, XHTML)
- Exchange and SMTP integration (Inbound and Outbound email including contact objects)
- High Availability: Microsoft Cluster Services, Windows Network Load Balancing
- Storage: Appliances, HBAs, SANs, Archive Storage
- Backup Solutions: Various Tape, Hardware and software snapshots, software nearline and offline storage (soon to add DPM 2007)
- Hardware load balancing, ISA Secure Web Publishing
- IAG (Internet Application Gateway) Whale Communications
- Single Sign on integration
- Connection Monitoring & Troubleshooting (ADO.NET, Web Services, CDO)
- Global Deployments - Multi farm deployments
- Dev, Test, Staging, Production - Staged deployments
- MOF, ITIL, MSF Frameworks and strong understanding of the development life cycle
- Virtualization - Virtual Server 2005, Virtual PC, VMWare
Solutions:
- Internet Publishing
- Internet Community Portal
- Intranet Central Search Portal
- Intranet Departmental Dashboard Portal
- Intranet Collaboration
- Business Process Management
- Extranet Collaboration
- Document Management
- Records repository
- BI Solutions
- Search Center or Intranet and Internet Search Solutions
- Reports Center
- Mobile Solutions
- Remote employee solutions
- Multi lingual solutions
- Project Server
- Web 2.0 Solution: Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking (Profiles & My Sites)
Extended
- AD (Group Policies, Security Groups, DLs, Contacts, authentication, and attributes for profile import)
- Desktop Management (IE settings, Office deployment, storage and collaboration considerations)
- MOM Systems Center Operations Monitoring of performance and system health of servers and dependencies
- WAN and Network performance testing and considerations, (minimum performance levels) caching
- File Services & (extremely light... policy SMS and Patching considerations)
- Antivirus management solutions like Forefront
- Presence Integration (LCS, Office Live Communication Server, SMTP and SIP)
- Understanding and supporting Dev: ASP.NET, C#, Assemblies, GAC, Bin, web.config, web parts, web part connections, missing assemblies
- MIIS in cross forest or resource forest scenarios or dynamic security groups
- Migration Skills: Public Folders, Documentum, Lotus Notes, CMS, WebSphere
Interop and Integration
- Office Interoperability (Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook)
- Project Server deployment
- Microsoft Dynamics (CRM, ERP, AXAPTA, GreatPlains, etc...)
- Infopath forms troubleshooting and basic design skills (XML, HTML)
- Visio integration
- Biztalk
- SharePoint Designer for workflows, CSS, Design, etc...
- Reporting and Analysis Integration: SQL Reporting Services, SQL Analysis Services
- SAP integration with Duet
- BDC Siebel web services integration
- Oracle Financials integration in BDC and Excel Services
- Other ADO.NET BDC connections: includes various CRM, ERP, DBMS
- Commerce integration in Internet sites
- Web Services integration
- Documentum, WebSphere
- Search/Indexing Integration
- Data warehouses RDBMS
- Single Sign on solutions and integration with client certificates, smart cards, and 2 factor auth
- N tiered web apps, web services, and stores
- Samba and NFS?
So you can see there's a lot to it. There's a good list of skills on the SharePoint Related IT Skills Top 30 chart and pivot based on category based on 4000 UK job postings. In addition, if someone were to come from the Unix, J2EE, blah blah world, there's a lot of commonality. It is some ramp up, but not crazy to go from Oracle to SQL Server, or from Apache to IIS. In fact, after the anger phase of somethings not working exactly the same, they'd find that there are many ways to do the same thing and there are the command like ways of doing things and the GUI way. Not just the simple, but the scriptable, the way that makes you feel powerful. So yes, being a SharePoint expert is really an overall IT broad and deep expert.
