<a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/SCM.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-7872" alt="SCM" src="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/SCM-300x33.jpg" width="300" height="33" /></a>

eGroup's SharePoint expert, <a href="http://egroup.jasonmangone.com/author/brad-shannon" target="_blank">Brad Shannon</a>, was recently quoted in SearchContentManagement's article covering SharePoint upgrades, "<a href="http://searchcontentmanagement.techtarget.com/feature/SharePoint-upgrade-requires-sharp-focus-on-planning-user-preparation" target="_blank">SharePoint upgrade requires sharp focus on planning, user preparation</a>."

Give it a read and then start documenting your infrastructure!
<h3 style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Document your infrastructure</em></h3>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>A company's technology infrastructure also needs to be prepared for upgrading to a new version of SharePoint, and as part of that process, it's important to document the existing features and services in a SharePoint environment as well as the new ones that will be deployed in the upgrade, said Brad Shannon, an application services engineer at eGroup, a technology consultancy in Mount Pleasant, S.C.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>"If you don't know what you have in your environment, you're going to find out the hard way," Shannon said, explaining that the more detailed the documentation of the current environment is, the better an organization can prepare for the SharePoint upgrade.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Companies should also start with a clean SharePoint farm, Shannon advised. "That means you don't have anything on the farm you don't need," he said. Sometimes SharePoint systems will include items used for testing purposes that were never fully deployed or removed. Leaving them in place can create more work for SharePoint administrators, Shannon said.</em></p>