Changing Plans?
June 12, 2008
As I’m sure most Notes folks are aware, SharePoint just isn’t as mature of a platform as Domino. While it has quite a bit of potential, and you can bend it to your will, accomplishing almost whatever you want (if you toss in a generous helping of C#), it just doesn’t offer the same day-to-day job satisfaction as doing solid development work in a platform on which you have years of expertise.
As one guy who commented a long time ago guessed, I’m just not sure that working in SP matches my long-term goals. I’ve always thought that I should complete my current migration effort, then switch to a new job, or a new role within my current organization. Some recent events at work (not related to SP or Domino) have made me wonder if I should speed up my efforts and just switch.
Purely from a job satisfaction perspective, SharePoint is drudgery. Learning new techniques amounts to a little bit of time reading up on how they are supposed to work, and a lot of time working around the quirks about how it REALLY works.
I’ve been downright thrilled with my recent Domino work on the other hand — I’ve working with apps that have been around for many years, and have become heaps of mangled spaghetti code. Cleaning them up, re-designing to match the current business needs, and converting them to web interfaces… Truly enjoyable work.
It means I haven’t had much to add to this blog recently, I know. There are plenty of people already covering the Notes/Domino world as-is.
I’m sharing these feelings with all of you not because I think it will help you with your own migrations, nor as a ‘fishing’ post to see if anyone wants a consultant for a while, but just as a statement of how your average Notes guy might feel 6 months into a migration. Morale is definitely an issue to worry about on migrations, as frustration levels run high. I know if I were my own manager right now, I’d be worried a lot more about the people on the team than the status of the project.
June 13, 2008 at 6:25 am
It’s nice to hear someone sum up the feelings I’ve had with moving from Notes to SharePoint. I have the fortune to not be so strictly pushed in the direction of SharePoint, rather only pushed in any direction away from Notes.
However, I chose SharePoint because of the reasons you state: It has potential, is malleable, and there’s a wealth of resources and large community to turn to if I get stuck.
I often find, though, that even the simplest apps I move to it are lackluster. The UI of Notes, while inflexible, was comfortable for our users and made it easy to build slick interfaces. Maybe in the future Silverlight will address that deficiency in SharePoint.
June 20, 2008 at 8:52 am
Can’t discuss Sharepoint wholly, not forced to use it or install it, but have used it with clients.
I have been on the backend of migrations and companies just see it like changing a tire. It’s just business, move along.
Yes, one should be more open to change, yet somehow many of us in IT prefer what we know.
Kind of like references to music or movies, what I like my kids have no understanding of.
We are now at a 2nd generation in IT of modern times and we are seen as the mainframe guys were in the 90’s.
But cheer up, someone will hire you, your an expert now in Sharpeoint migrations, sadly but the money is good.
October 25, 2008 at 6:31 am
Hi
I have just found this blog and share the same concerns. I am in the same situation as you – I have 8 years Notes experience, the last 4 in ASP.NET having slowly moved off Notes. My organisation, which seems to be as stable a job as you could hope for (meaning I have a massive reluctance to leave based on the current jobs climate in the UK), have recently decided to move COMPLETELY OFF Domino and go MS for everything.
The thing I miss the most is the RAD of Domino. MS, with their massive marketing muscle, can tout RAD all they like, but in my 20 years of IT experience have never seen anything which can deliver like Notes/Domino. But, unfortunately, as is often the case where I have worked, people just did not “get it”, and that includes senior management where I work. So out it goes. In comes SP as an collaborative environment. And with it, the migration of HUNDREDS of apps.
Where to start. SharePoint Designer? (Clunky, buggy after seeing it on a course). Infopath (never seen it). Visual Studio (with SharePoint extensions)? Who knows. The strengths of each from a SharePoint point of view have all to be learnt. But there is a big list of Notes features which we take for granted that have to map to SharePoint:
ECL
ACL (7 levels, roles)
doclinks/view links/
signed agents
controlled access sections
readers fields
encrypted fields
scheduled agents
- the list goes on.
I fear that there will be a lot of massaging the square Notes peg into the round SharePoint hole to keep the business happy. I fear the long, tedious mapping process to get a similar user experience. And I fear the loss of RAD, which keeps things fresh, exciting and challenging. (Not that ASP.NET was ever RAD. Better in 2005, yes, but never RAD like Domino developers know and love.)
I shall get up to speed with your blog; thanks for setting it up. I am 0% into this migration exercise and your experience may well help me.
Mark
January 14, 2009 at 12:25 pm
From an ease of use and time to market point of view, Notes cannot be beat. But that doesn’t mean a darn thing if the Notes job market is dead. And dear God, it it ever dead. I was bless to have been at the right place at the right time and moved over to the Microsoft side of my company…and now have over a year of SharePoint under my belt. I also have my MCTS certification in SharePoint. The economy still stinks as of Jan ‘09, but I know that Notes jobs will continue to be non-existent and that SharePoint jobs will continue to explode and pay $$$. Yea, everything is harder to do in SharePoint, but so what? It sure isn’t any harder than WebSphere Portal and I know tons of Notes geeks who were dying to jump to that product when IBM was touting its praises a few years ago.