This came up the other day: what is the worst idea you've seen done in SharePoint? We developed a list of five, which were too specific to describe here. However, I think they represent five general traps that enterprises can fall into when deploying SharePoint.
In order, our top pitfalls were:
1) Not enough site collections.
Increasingly, I look at site collections as a security mechanism. They keep permissions completely separate and allow you to delegate administration. Every huge site collection I've seen in production has been a nest of confusing SharePoint groups that is difficult to untangle. This is a more serious problem because it hits late in the game, once everyone is relying on SharePoint.
2) Ignore training.
SharePoint is easy, but not intuitive. All users need some training. I generally figure one half-day class to teach how to use their specific collaboration site; and one half-day class for site owners (again, using their sites). General training is less effective, since users really want examples that apply to their work, and that's hard to do in the abstract.
3) Go custom early.
SharePoint can deliver 90% of immediate needs using out-of-the-box features. Not maxing that out before attacking the very real remaining 10% delays immediate results and can result in a team that doesn't fully understand the core features very well. That's a huge on-going cost.
4) Ignore change control.
Maintaining a log of configuration changes, versioning templates, themes, master pages, and all custom components is old-hat to most software developers, but it's new ground for some SharePoint teams. If you aren't familar with these concepts, you will learn why they are important down the road, trust me...
5) Stay too long in planning.
The best solutions are adaptive, not predictive. It's impossible to know exactly how SharePoint should be implemented in an enterprise before actually doing it. Planning is important, but if it goes on for more than 30 days, cut scope and deliver something, then learn from that experience.
Bonus! Here are a three that just missed the top-five:
6) Bad branding.
It is better to do minimal branding than branding that hides or breaks features. Branding can be difficult in SharePoint, but it possible to deliver it incrementally by versioning the pieces.
7) Prohibit My Sites.
My Sites are a great training tool, leverage employee intellegence, and can easily fit in to existing email/Internet use policies. Gee Jeff, how do you really feel?
8) Move your farm.
Part of the planning process should be choosing the hardware to install on. Don't accept "We can move it later." That's a real pain in production and 100% avoidable.