SharePoint Governance - Part 1

SharePoint Governance Plan

What governance should mean for every organization? 

 It comes down to three basic points:

1. SharePoint doesn't matters - The business matters.

2. Governance is not a checklist, but a strategy. 

3. When you understand the requirements of your business, and the constraints of the technology, you can use governance to bridge the gaps. 

     SharePoint is just a tool which we achieve certain business outcomes, and against which we apply our governance standards. Governance is a strategic activity and not a set of rules to be applied. In an ideal world, the governance plan will be built prior to implementation. The starting point should be to define the roles, responsibilities, procedures etc that your plan will consist of. In most cases, it is achieved through continuous review and analysis. This analysis will help to understand hoe users are interacting with SharePoint. 



Points to consider while creating a Governance Plan

1. Roles and Responsibilities

1. Who will be responsible for the SharePoint implementation?
2. Who will be reviewing how effective the Governance policies are?
3. Centralized or decentralized administration?
4. Who can create sites?
5. Who will manage security?  

2. Infrastructure

1.  What servers/services are required?
2.  How many content databases are needed?
3.  How many site collections?
4.  What site Quotas level should be enforced?

3. Configuration

1. Metadata/Taxonomy definitions?
2. Look and feel - How to manage master pages, site themes, navigation etc.
3. AD Groups, SharePoint Groups or both for managing permissions. 

4. Users

1. How to ensure end user adoption?
2. How to provide  training?
3. How to provide support? 

Courtesy : Christian Buckley, MVP