Sharepoint is indeed the cure for something (much like the mould in the sink) but not for communication. I am a project manager by trade and have spent a professional lifetime finding my way around the latest techno-nonsense that will finally, finally give us a grip on our project status and spending.

The latest one is a beast called “Clarity” which is so complex to administer that we have actually had to take on extra staff so that the projects required to use it to do not founder under the weight of its inputs. I am not joking or exaggerating, you cannot even get a printed report out of the thing.

In contrast I have seen project work most effectively administered by a tiny Lotus app that wanted you to upload a standard wordprocessed report (ie the same one you would submit on paper anyway) and give a traffic light (Red Amber Green) to your status. If you wanted the project to get managment attention you put in a Red or Amber and they automatically put you on the agenda of the next management meeting.

I have struggled to use complex support applications from Tivoli to Applix to whadever. I did get effective support from an ancient mainframe mail system that the gurus from engineering monitored faithfully.

The best tools are the simple ones supported by good behaviours. The worst ones are the complex ones whose asymmetric demands compared to value delivered create avoidance and even downright fraud.