One Site to Rule them ALL?

As a SharePoint professional who has built many Proposal Resource Centers using the SharePoint platform I am often asked “Should we put all the proposal in one site or create a separate site for each proposal?” Like most questions I come across the answer is……… “That Depends”.

When making this decision consider the following:

How large is your proposal team?
For teams of 5 or more (be it proposal writers, technologists, or SMEs) there is generally more collaboration that is spread across longer periods of time. This lends itself to dedicated areas to work.

How many proposals does your team work on at once?
If it is more than one or two having separate sites can help eliminate task and deliverable confusion.

How dispersed is your team?
If they are all remote and not easily accessible having separated sites will also help eliminate task and deliverable confusion.

How long does it take to produce a proposal?
If they are small proposals that are created in a week or so, this works well in a single site. For larger proposals that may take a month or more separate sites are better.

How complex is your proposal process? How automated?
A single site does not lend itself to complex workflows such as the Bid-No Bid or Red Team reviews. These processes tend to have lots of output that is better suited to putting them in a self contained area. Often reviews and production process are contained in sub sites under the proposal sites.

So after reading this you might think…. Use Multiple sites!.... Hold on a second before you make that decision! There are challenges that Multiple sites bring. In a single site you can easily create views and charts that can allow you to see the status of all the activities across your company. with multiple sites there is no good out of the box way to do this. If you go the route of multiple sites make sure you plan for not just organization but for reporting.

How are you using SharePoint? Single or Multiple sites?

The good news is that there are many ways to solve the issues with multiple sites!

For those of you interested in a single site solution I am currently developing a single site template that will provide rich features to get you started.

I will be unveiling this at the National Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) conference in Phoenix AZ the week of June 8th 2009.

It will be available for download shortly thereafter!.

More to come on this in a future post!