Call to action - What parts of governance for SharePoint do you want to hear about?  I'll post new topics based on user requests. Just create requests by posting comments at the bottom of this blog. (request it again, even if others have already asked for it. Its kind of like voting and the most votes gets a post first)

This is the first of many rants on Governance.  I'm definitely trying to socialize many facets of Governance with Customers and Partners.  It is essential to success and (evidently) easily overlooked.

What is Governance?
Structured Control.

What if you don't have any Governance?
You don't have control.

Do you need Governance for a successful SharePoint installation?
YES!

What should be in a Governance Plan? (minimal list)

  1. Hosting model - Central IT or delegated to business units?
  2. Service model - Central service owners or delegated to business units?
  3. Taxonomy - What is the structure of the systems that SharePoint will implement? (formal division sites, mysites, collaboration spaces?)
  4. Architecture- Sizing, Capacity, Growth Strategy, Logical Architecture
  5. Operations - Who runs the infrastructure and what tools/processes to they have? What standards to they have to meet?
  6. Availability, DR, and Business Continuity -
  7. Service Management - SLA's, monitoring, uptime, service tiers (commodity vs. customized applications)
  8. Provisioning - Central vs. Self Service. What can users do on their own? How can you create big picture policies while still allowing freedom and removing strain on IT departments and help desks?
  9. Information management policies - Retention, Disposal, Labeling, Bar coding, Auditing, Records Management, Rights Management
  10. Security Policies - Authentication providers, Remote users, External Users, etc.
  11. Finance Policies - Do you have a chargeback model? How is cost distributed
  12. Users - How do you support them? How do your garner adoption?
  13. Communication plan - What do you tell the organization? and when?

What if you don't Govern?

  1. Site sprawl - sites proliferate like wildfire and you will be without ways to reign them in without upsetting users (who thought they had unlimited storage forever)
  2. Technology proliferation - Users don't know where to put content so it ends up replicated all over file shares, public folders, etc.
  3. Server Proliferation - Groups are unwilling to consume centralized service so they install their own SharePoint (and probably do it poorly due to lack of budget/mandate/experience)
  4. Waste - Content and systems overlap and are needlessly redundant or repetitious wasting tons of money on hardware and software.
  5. Inconsistent - Everybody does things differently so everything from backups to site branding is all over the map. Creating a poor and ill managed user experience.
  6. Damage - "Home grown" SharePoint installations often lack the rigor of setting up data recovery or other essential items.  This often leads to data loss or compromise
  7. Poor user adoption - If you don't articulate how they should use it and how you will support them, user adoption will suffer.

What are the Goals of Governance? (no particular order)

  1. Drive Consistency
  2. Assigning responsibility to qualified parties (IT, Service Owner, etc.)
  3. Operational Excellence
  4. Mitigate conflict and provide a framework for Decision making
  5. Manage hardware and software assets strategically
  6. Set clear expectations of service with users
  7. Lower costs
  8. Reduce Risk
  9. Provide "Roadmap" for approach to intentionally and deliberately plan rollouts

Some Resources