Recently I read Steve Denning's article about moving away from hierarchical organisational structures. However, I found myself confused about the difference between heterarchy, and responsible autonomy, two alternate forms of polyarchy in opposition to the tradition of hierarchy.
Undoubtedly, one of Microsoft's biggest successes of the past 10 years has been Microsoft SharePoint.
After a couple of stuttering early releases, SharePoint 2003 became a useful and viable choice for organisations that were heavily reliant on Microsoft Office documents (ie just about everyone), due to its ability to provide flexible, end-user customisation of sites and seamless opening and saving of documents in Office (no more download -> edit -> upload cycles!).
Strategically it's been brilliant, because it has become a natural extension of using Office for people who don't like receiving documents in their inbox like Strategic-Plan-v12.1+JC comments.docx. Microsoft's also incorporated SharePoint integration into many of their products including Dynamics CRM, and even made SharePoint the underlying platform of a few (Project Server, Forefront Identity Manager).
But that typical Microsoft ease of installation was always countered by recordkeepers who would say (with perhaps a tinge of relief) that "it wasn't records compliant". And this was true, unless you locked down most of the features that made SharePoint a platform people wanted to use in the first place! So in many organisations, SharePoint lives side by side with an "official" recordkeeping platform like TRIM or Objective.
A great piece of investigative reporting from Bob Lewis. He discovered the Loch Ness Monster a SAP implementation project that finished ahead of schedule by the Japanese company Daiwa House Industry.
The lessons are entirely relevant to any complex project implementation.