Background

The NexGen SharePoint team manages and maintains the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) corporate and Denver office SharePoint 2010 platforms—hosting a variety of sites and applications. Starting with SharePoint 2010, Reclamation has made extensive use of the technology. SharePoint services currently support approximately 840 sites including sub-sites with anticipated growth of approximately 175 internal sites per year. The external SharePoint services currently supports 129 sites, with anticipated growth of approximately 150 sites in one year. This project involves custom web application development support; requirements elicitation and analysis; and development, deployment, and management of Reclamation SharePoint services and sites. NexGen staff members work with Reclamation stakeholders to understand their information dissemination needs and to design and establish the sites (including developing and implementing custom workflows).

Challenge

In addition to needing support to migrate its sites from SharePoint 2010 to 2013, Reclamation was looking for an out-of-the-box (OOTB) or custom solution for its SharePoint 2010/2013 sites.  

Solution

Specific services/solutions included: 

• Custom-coded applications (.NET with MVC pattern, Angular JS, JQuery) such as VM Server Request, Change Management Operations/ Change Management Applications, VPN Access Request, SCADA Change Management, RICI, EP/ADM Application
• Customized OOTB application
• OOTB site creation
• OOTB and customized workflows
• O&M support

To address the OOTB requirement, NexGen created SharePoint Designer-based and custom workflows for various applications, suggested best practices, and rewirte the custom, high-trusted solutions of SharePoint 2010 for 2013.

For O&M tickets, NexGen collaborated with the users to resolve Heat tickets assigned to the team—as timely as possible and with a high level of quality.

During the project, NexGen was met with the challenge of obtaining full requirements from the business. To mitigate this, NexGen scheduled regular meetings with the Reclamation PM and business to gather requirements and clarifications. In addition, there was a lack of documentation related to the project, so NexGen worked with the Reclamation PM to document processes and best practices and create templates where needed.

Outcome

NexGen was able to accommodate the user's requirements by providing them with the appropriate solution to address their specific needs. For example, we provided a centralized repository of IT solutions for Reclamation; created uniform branding of Reclamation SharePoint sites;  streamlined various approval processes, and encouraged the use of electronic (instead of manual) approvals to reduce manual records management.

Reclamation's expectations were met and exceeded because NexGen followed the most optimal solution for all SharePoint requirements and issues. With respect to the relevant technology, NexGen responded to O&M tickets within the minimum time possible and our team used industry best practices for code reviews. 

Creating an environment that fostered transparent communication with Reclamation management, using Agile methodology for project development, and providing ongoin demos to the business to garner feedback were all important requirements for the client. NexGen was successful in its service-delivery promise.