Understanding Governance

Governance in Communications, Policy and SharePoint Controls

Scott Chapman — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:20:00 GMT

Once you have helped form your organization’s SharePoint Governance Committee, it will be vital for the committee to form a clear, consistent yet fair Policy regarding SharePoint usage. But where will the committee begin? What rules should they make? Should the rules be stringent or loose?

Documented communications and Policy and Procedure are the first steps for a governance committee. Then IT Administration can follow through by setting various controls in SharePoint Central Administration >> SharePoint Governance Settings to help automate the enforcement of some of the rules outlined in the policy.

Of course, the committee may need some help knowing where to start or even what to address. This is where the IT Administrator can come in handy. The IT Administrator can give a list of common SharePoint Governance issues to the committee, and the committee can decide which of the items may or may not apply to the organization. The committee may also have a few ideas of their own regarding issues they’d like to address in governance.

Following are some of the more common items committees will address:

· Site Quotas: size limitations per site and amount of sites in a site collection.

· Site Provisioning: easing the process of requesting and approving new sites while also making it impossible to create sites without following proper procedure.

· Site Navigation: making it as easy as possible for users to find the sites they belong to. Also make it easy to find sites a user may not be member of.

· Usage Monitoring: See hits on sites and send alerts to owners/administrators of unused sites.

· Emails or Communications regarding administrative activity.

Once the committee has decided on its rules and policies regarding SharePoint usage, the next important step is for the committee to draft and approve a written communication to go out to all users in the organization. The communication should have an exciting kick-off feel to it, announcing the new release of SharePoint, all of its collaborative, publishing and reporting features and information relevant to the unique qualities of the business. The communication should also point all users to the newly formed Policy and Procedure for SharePoint – it may be wise to make a Policy and Procedure Site and point users there in the initial communication.

Remember, COMMUNICATION IS EVERYTHING!!! The heavier the structure of governance in SharePoint, the more communication should take place. This is because a user group who is unsure of the reason for SharePoint or a user group who cannot effectively feel SharePoint may likely become a user group that will not fully adapt to using SharePoint as the committee had hoped and planned. Communication to personnel must always take place first, before any rules are put in place within SharePoint. This is because surprising and/or seemingly unfair rules that defer user’s hopeful expectations will hinder adoption needed to prove a worthy ROI.

Remember the SharePoint Governance Kit!

Once the SharePoint Governance Committee has decided on the rules and policy to be set for SharePoint and its user group, the IT Administrator can go through the SharePoint Governance menu within Central Administration and set all the necessary and available controls for properly managing SharePoint according the desires of the new policy.

Can you imagine the potential for authorized users to create sites at will, without some Users and Administrators ever knowing of the sites’ existence? If you have 20 different departments at Corporate HQ, and each department has an average of five administrative users, imagine the amount of sub-sites they could potentially create for all of their different projects, initiatives, events, etc. What you need is an ability to monitor or review a list of all sites that have been created. Why? With heavy usage, many sites get created and then are soon forgotten and unused, therefore taking up unnecessary space on your servers. Some sites have a tendency go off into oblivion and hide. The Site Provisioning Extender makes it very easy for an authorized user to request and create a site. Built-in workflows allow for an organized manner of creating and accounting for new sites. The Site Provisioning Extender can also help you with this issue by keeping track of all sites created and list them by geography, site type, titles, disciplines (e.g. Business Intelligence) and more. The metadata captured while a user is creating a new site also makes it much easier for both Users and Administrators to find sites.

The Site navigation Extender allows users to see which sites they belong to and what permission levels they have. The user may click on a header control at the top of his Home Page titled My Team Sites. This header is a drop-down list which displays all the sites this User belongs to with permission levels of Contributor or higher – in any existing SharePoint farm! The Site Navigation Extender also provides web part controls that allow a user to see all the sites he or she owns as well as all sites he or she is a member of – across all existing farms (Intranet, Internet, Extranet/DMZ).

The Site Directory Extender uses the metadata from the Site Provisioning Extender to help users find sites more quickly and efficiently. This may help users easily find relevant data rather than creating new sites with duplicate data since the original site(s) could not be found.

The Quota Management Extender is probably one of the most valuable tools in the SharePoint Governance Kit. This tool allows an administrator to manage quotas at individual site levels as well as set alerts for the site administrators to receive when respective sites are nearing quota limits.

Remember – governance and planning go hand-in-hand. If you do not address governance in your SharePoint configuration and deployment plans, you will quickly end up with a system that is unorganized and out of control. Some users may still try to use SharePoint, but most users will not benefit from it, and the expected Return on Investment will likely not be in sight. Don’t let this happen to you!

Help form a strong SharePoint Governance Committee!
Work with the Committee to form a solid (& workable) policy around SharePoint!
Use the SharePoint Governance Kit to make setting and monitoring your governance controls as easy as possible!

Forming a SharePoint Governance Committee

Scott Chapman — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:35:00 GMT

Most would agree it is important to establish a Governance Strategy of some degree, but how will this strategy or plan be conceived? Let's suppose you are the SharePoint Administrator. Will you create this plan on your own and then pass it around to your boss, the CIO and a couple good business contacts for their approval? It is likely this will not be good enough to support effective governance for SharePoint. Of course, there may be exceptions to this, as your company may be small - less than 100 people - and you may be the SharePoint Administrator as well as one of the owners or leaders. If this is the case, you may be able to effectively document a strategy as well as communicate the plan along with all associated policies and rules. But, what if your company grows quicker than expected to 250 employees? Will you still want to be running this governance gamut alone? Consider at least two things:

SharePoint tends to snowball in usage as time goes on. Many users discover it, and as soon as they truly adopt and "get it," their reliance on the product increases significantly.
Many, if not most, established companies have downsized or are downsizing now only to anticipate rebuilding and realizing growth in the next five years. *Part of your committee's challenge will be to address ROI -- how to ultimately use SharePoint to maximize your company's operational efficiencies and revenues and spur growth for your company.

It would be prudent to expect growth for your company, form a cohesive committee, and create a solid plan for increased usage over the next few years. Once you have decided that a Governance Committee should be formed, the next question is, "Who should be on this committee?" In some cases a better question may be, "Who should not be on this committee?" You certainly do not want anyone's time wasted, and you also do not want anyone wasting the committee's time. Forming the correct committee is the first step towards good end-user adoption.

Choose your committee candidates wisely. Can you develop a list of candidates on your own? You might be able to, or you might want the help of a couple others - this really depends on who you are, who you know in the company and the size or breadth of your company. If you decide you need help and are unsure of where to start, talk with your Director, VP or CIO. They should be able to help you get a good start and can help you connect with others to help form a list of appropriate candidates. Your management team also may have a sound idea of some persons who absolutely should be on the committee.

Some things to keep in mind when selecting candidates:

Who is/are the sponsor/s of SharePoint? Who in leadership championed this product and brought it into the company? Who is the purse holder? The answer may be you. Or the answer may be the COO and the Marketing Executive. Sponsors should be part of the committee.
Who are the Stakeholders? Stakeholders are typically business or operational leaders whose work, agendas, departments or SBUs will be directly impacted by SharePoint. If many Stakeholders are identified, two or three may be elected to represent all Stakeholders.
Does your company have any Business Analysts who happen to know both business processes and SharePoint well? BAs can sometimes be over-looked, but the truth is that a good BA will have an ability to gain the trust of and communicate well with business leaders as well as IT personnel. Need some promotional energy and charisma? This would be a good person to consider having on the committee. It is ironic that BAs can sometimes be overlooked to sit on a governance committee, because it is often a BA who will think of things or areas often over-looked by Sponsors, Stakeholders or various IT Administrators or Managers.
Who are the Power Users in your company? Power Users are typically non-management end users of various levels who have a good applicable knowledge of business processes as well as the product. Power Users are sometimes the most effective persons on the committee because of their working knowledge of the (SharePoint) system and are regularly using the product to complete their daily operational tasks. Like Business Analysts, Power Users can and often will address items that may be over-looked by others on the committee.
Can you think of any IT employees who ought to be on the committee? The CIO, SharePoint Administrator, Database Administrator, Infrastructure Manager, Support Desk Manager, BI Manager and Managers of any integrated products are all IT persons to consider. Again, this depends on the size and breadth of your company as well as the stake these various people may have in SharePoint.
Do you have a Legal Department and/ or a Compliance Department? Depending on how SharePoint is going to be used in your company, you may want to have representation from Legal and Compliance on the committee. Attractive decisions are only good if they are legal and compliant.

The gravity or reality of forming a committee is that not everyone chosen will actually care about the product compared to others who very much understand the potential impact of SharePoint and care about its direction in and for the company. It is imperative to have people on the governance committee who understand the importance of good governance and who will proactively get involved with all the governance decisions to be made. If you have any apathetic committee members, no matter what their title may be, you risk the quality of governance. Try at all costs to avoid having any prop-heads on the committee.

So, how do you rally all these candidates to join the committee amongst their busy schedules? This can be somewhat of an art and again depends on who you are and who you know - or better yet, who knows you and trusts you. If you are the SharePoint Administrator in IT and feel timid or like your interpersonal skills are shaky at best, you may want to solicit the help of a good IT/Business liaison to help you champion the idea of a committee to all the selected candidates. This can sometimes require a lot of networking, promoting and charisma (and sometimes just good ol' fashioned teeth-pulling), as it is not always immediately clear or evident to high-level managers why any of their time should be spent on SharePoint Governance decisions.

Always remember that the beginning of a good strategic plan for SharePoint Governance begins with the right Governance Committee...

A Beginner’s Look at SharePoint Governance

Scott Chapman — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 07:08:00 GMT

So you have SharePoint 2007 rolled out, and things are going great for you as the SharePoint Administrator - the one in charge of this wonderful product your company has finally elected to use for the organization!

But wait. Do you have a governance strategy in place? Do you need one? Are you wondering what governance is, really? You'll find that governance is defined as the rules which address how SharePoint will be set up, organized, and managed. Imagine our country and states with absolutely no government - complete autonomy. Think there would be utter chaos and anarchy? You betcha! The same goes for SharePoint. It is likely very important for you and your organization to have a governance plan of some degree in place to avoid any disorder or confusion. But how tightly should SharePoint governance controls be set for your organization? This is an important question for several reasons:

How much freedom do you want to allow in your plan? Do you want to allow the Marketing Department the ability to add custom design to their site and add their own web parts?
How many controls in SharePoint need to be set in place versus how much written policy and communication regarding the rules is sent out to users in the organization?
If governance is too tight and restrictive, will users even adopt and use it?
If governance is too permissible, will or could SharePoint eventually stop working?
Is your organization interested in having a branded SharePoint product across the board, for all departments and sites, or should each organizational department be able to identify its own look, brand and feel?

These and many other questions may be asked when considering whether you need a governance plan and how that plan should look. Many of the answers will depend on things like company culture, company size, the industry, public or private, and so forth. Keep in mind that adoption is everything - if users don't like and won't use their given site(s) as originally planned and hoped, will the ROI for SharePoint be there in the end?

Let's suppose your organization has 15,000 employees and is heavily regulated by the SEC, SOX, and several other agencies. You may want a rather intricate governance plan, as well as a committee to help create and implement that plan. The SharePoint Governance Kit would be beneficial, as it will help you quickly navigate around SharePoint and Central Administration to implement and manage all of your necessary governance controls.