SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning and Implementation

Why do you need a Governance Plan?

• Scott indicated that 20% of a successful solution implementation is about Technology, but about 95% of the Governance documentation is about Technology.  We need to be prepared for the other 80%.
• Users need to be trained appropriately before being empowered with the control of the system.
  • People do not treat SharePoint like an Enterprise Application
  • Letting users add unlimited items to a list – can kill the server
  • Not Planning for scale and growth
  • Users can do a lot – we give them “great power” and need to ensure they accept their “great responsibility”
  • Many of SharePoint’s capabilities are not required or mandated, so if you mess it up, there is a work around for them (e.g. they will collaborate through email if you don’t get SharePoint collaboration correct).

What Does Governance mean in the context of SharePoint?

• Your Governance Plan defines people roles, technology and policy guidelines and process to resolve ambiguity.
  • People – Define clear roles and responsibilities
  • Technology – Define policies for service levels and appropriate use
  • Policy – Articulate design and usage principles
    • In 2010, how will people feel if they give someone a rating of 1 (out of 5) for someone else’s document
• Process – For example provisioning a site

Define a Vision – Don’t think about requirements from the start, but instead, talk about the “outcomes” (what are you trying to achieve).  Requirements can be derived from the desired outcome.  The Governance Plan will help support the Vision

People Roles

• Get the right people in place (MOSS introduced many new roles that were required, but most organizations didn’t assign people to these roles.  Take the rollout of SharePoint 2010 as an opportunity to get people assigned to these roles. Most of these roles are NOT full time, and one person can fill more than one role.)
  • Executive Sponsor
  • Governance Board / Steering Committee
  • Business Owner
  • Solution Administrator
  • Technology Support Team
  • Site Sponsor / Owner
  • Site Steward
  • User
  • The management of Enterprise Corporate Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010 will need to have an owner (even though other may be allowed to update the data).

Governance Model – An Overview of the Governance Model created by Microsoft was presented.

Guiding Principles

• Publish Once, Link Many
• No Email attachments – Send links
• In 2007 Use Metadata not folders – In 2010 Use Folders to inherit metadata.
  • NOTE The concept of using folders in SharePoint 2010 is a paradigm shift that IT and end users will need to understand and utilize.
  • Content management is everyone’s responsibility but site owners are accountable

Tactics for Successful Roll-out and Strategy

• Fun and engaging launch event
  • Example, Birth announcement of SharePoint, Scavenger Hunt for content within the site
  • Lunch-n-learns
  • Power Users Community of Practice – Power users teach others

Content Management Plan – Is changing a column on a list code or content?  Who is allowed to make these changes?  Is SharePoint Designer workflow code or content?  There will be even more decisions like this to be made with the rollout of SharePoint 2010.

Governance Plan Document

• Break documents into chunks
  • Vision
  • Roles and Responsibilities
  • Guiding Principles
  • Policies
  • Guidelines/Best Practices
  • Procedures
  • Do not include
    • Implementation Details
    • Network Requirements
    • Feature Requirements

Tip: The actual “process” of creating the document is more important than the actual document itself.  Make sure to include Human Resources (e.g. what can people post on blogs, put on their MySite, etc.).  Everyone wants SharePoint, but no one wants to take responsibility for it.  So the actual process, of arriving at decisions is the most important part.

Governance Details for SharePoint 2010

• Social Computing Implications
  • Rating of documents (especially a low rating) may cause people to shy away from loading documents.  Note that changing the wording of the rankings may be able to help in this regard.
  • MySites – Posting information that people will judge you on within the organization, or you may shy away
• Managed Metadata
• • Managed Keyword vs. Managed Term
    • Managed Keywords – Allow users to key in phrases or key words (that have edit rights) on an item – they can type in whatever they want. 
    • Managed Terms – Based off of the master hierarchy/taxonomy values
    • Social Tags – Even though you do not have edit rights to this content, anyone can “socially tag” this content
    • NOTE: The distinction of these terms is confusing and will need to be better understood by the SharePoint owners, so that it can be explained to end users, and what access an end user will be able to utilize.
• Records Management
  • In-Place Records vs. Records Archive
    • Organizations will probably use both
• Resource Governor
  • More than 5,000 items in list, SharePoint won’t return
  • Need to communicate / educate users about this
• Content Organizer
  • Used to partition/route documents based on metadata
  • Need to communicate / educate users where their documents are going
• SharePoint Customizations
  • SharePoint Designer – On or Off
  • SODA – SharePoint On-Demand Applications
  • Excel and Access Solutions – Turn this on or off?
  • Sandbox Solutions