by Jill Austin, Director IM Practice

One of the things that we have learned from our years of implementing SharePoint solutions is the importance of having a governance plan. Often people just want to get started with SharePoint, usually to solve a pressing problem.  One of SharePoint’s strengths is the ease with which you can ‘just get started’, particularly when implementing Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). If you’ve done sufficient planning, requirements definition and design, then you’re ahead of the game. But, you will still run into problems very quickly unless you have a plan for governing the new system.

Your new SharePoint is a living thing. It has to grow and change with your business over time. You have to plan for this to happen and do the planning before you release SharePoint to your organization.

What are the elements of a governance plan?

·         A SharePoint roadmap to plan for new features in future releases, such as integration with other business applications or an extranet for collaboration with stakeholders or customers.

·         Custodians defined for all the evolving elements: portal pages, metadata, navigation and taxonomy, collaboration sites, document libraries and lists, records centre.

·         A SharePoint Administrator defined and trained to manage the server, user access, monitoring reports, and system upgrades.

·         Standards established for any development on the SharePoint platform.

·         A training plan to ensure that all users (current and new hires) know how to use the system and understand their responsibilities with respect to the content in the system.

·         Ongoing monitoring to ensure that the system is being governed according to the plan, and that the plan is renewed periodically.

Establishing governance is straightforward. The sooner you do it, the better – and definitely do it before your system goes into production.

When it comes to SharePoint, give us a call. We can help.