The SharePoint Governance Plan is a guidebook outlining the administration, maintenance, and support of your organization’s SharePoint environments. It helps you identify lines of ownership for the business and technical teams, and it defines who is responsible for what areas of the system. And finally, it establishes the rules you've decided on for appropriate usage of your SharePoint environment.
This blog is part three of a series on SharePoint Governance. Just to clarify, this series is not designed to give you a SharePoint Governance Plan template where you just fill in the blanks. Such templates exist, and you can probably find them online. But the problem with cookie-cutter templates is that they don't cover
your organizations particular needs, and because of that they won't get read, and they won't get used. These blog posts are rather an outline to help you determine what needs to be included in
your SharePoint Governance Plan, and to determine how it will be implemented in
your organization.
The purpose of the plan is to ensure all users with access to your organization’s SharePoint environment are able to use it to its full potential. The plan is in place to to give them quick access to the terms of use and resources for training.
As I said in a previous post, SharePoint is a powerful tool that can be deployed for different purposes in different companies. It is important to establish what its purpose is specifically for your company or organization, and make it clear in the SharePoint Governance Plan, as it will shape the direction for many of the rules and guidelines.
The first thing the newly formed Governance Committee should establish is the vision for SharePoint. Something I learned from my pastor many years ago is that "vision leaks." What that means is that having a vision is important, but it's not enough to just set it in place once and expect people to remember it and rally around it indefinitely. Once you've established your vision you have to keep it in front of your users' eyes continually, and make it your mantra. Keep reminding people of the core purpose of SharePoint and how it is helping them and your organization. And make it simple. Break it down to its root elements so that anyone can easily understand it.
Determine the vision for SharePoint
- What is the primary vision of SharePoint for your organization?
- What key organizational solutions is it designed to address?
Remember, as you determine the vision, this is not a vision for what features might or might not be needed in SharePoint. Instead, ask "What solutions do we want SharePoint to provide to problems or bottlenecks within our organization?"
Be Generous
Also keep in mind that the purpose of the SharePoint Governance Plan is
not to limit users’ access to SharePoint, but rather it's there to
enable them. Give them easy access to the areas that pertain to them. Help them to solve problems quickly and efficiently. And as much as possible, provide an automated workflow for these solutions.
SharePoint is constantly evolving, and the SharePoint Governance Plan is not meant to be a static document. It will continue to grow and change, but answering these questions, and establishing a clear vision will ensure that the core purpose of SharePoint remains the same.
Since I am SharePoint guy at my company, Bit-Wizards, feel free to ask me any questions you may have, and let us assist you as you put together your SharePoint Governance Plan. We have a whole team of talented Office 365 wizards who can help with anything you can throw at us!