Getting End User buy-in is one of the toughest parts of any SharePoint implementation. One of the best things I’ve found is real world stories, how did this thing help in the work environment.

In a previous post, I was passing ideas back and forth about how important blogs can be to expose ideas, patterns and processes while acting as a historical reference.  Chris Quick’s reponse is worth quoting here:

The irony of your post is that one of my users who manages our online learning system came to me about 3 months into our deployment and wanted a blog for this very scenario. He uses it to post all of his configuration changes to this system so he has both a track record of support incidents with the vendor and a complete log of changes. This has increased the productivity of calls to the vendor as there are no more check here/there for what the configuration values are!

Another idea came from our facilities management group. They manage all of the HVAC systems on the campus, but they have to coordinate changes of the systems with several part-time employees. The HVAC system has no way to record why a change occurred to the system, so the part-time workers were wrestling with the system. For example, the normal schedule would be to maintain the room at 79 degrees when unoccuppied. However, a special event might have requested the room during that period and another part-time worker made a change in the HVAC system for the event. Before the blog, another part-time worker might come in and notice that the room was suddenly at 72 degrees instead of the scheduled 79 degrees, so they would change it back to the normal schedule. This frustrated clients and employees who had made arrangements, perhaps months in advance. Now, the part-time workers can investigate the blog to determine why a change was entered.

So, hopefully this will give some ideas on how blogs can be used in the context of a business environment! Great idea!

There you go! Now you’ve got some ammunition to take to your End Users and say “What is the context in which we can use this thing?” Brainstorm ideas on how a blog can be used to expose process, make changes transparent, communicate the latest progress report.

What else? Any ideas?