Good evening everyone,

For those of us who are living, breathing and eating SharePoint, the notion of Governance is not only attractive, it is a necessity.  We've seen the complexities of trying to implement SharePoint without a balanced and coherent approach and so we argue for at least some level of governance.

However, the reality is that many more people have not been exposed to the need for governance.  In fact, to these folks, governance can often be perceived as consultant or IT fodder which is in a large part, wholly unnecessary.  And until they start to get exposed to the complexities of deploying a common SharePoint platform to the masses of an organization, their perspective is reasonably grounded.

So, to my fellow SharePoint and ECM peers, I’d like to offer up some advice.  Or better yet, some shared experiences!  Specifically, I’ve found that when dealing with people who are new to the SharePoint world, it is often best to introduce governance principles in a less formal context.  Specifically, the notion of discussing standards from a business, delivery and technical perspective can be conveyed in ways that speak more generally to this audience.

For example, we can think of some common sense approaches to illustrate the point as follows:

§   Business: How to manage investments or time or money, which projects get selected, who needs to weigh in, how do we avoid duplication, etc.?

§   Delivery: Where does a business person turn to ask for a new site, understand what is possible with SharePoint, or get help in organizing and completing a project?

§   Technology: What standards are in place for WebParts, customizations, integrations, etc?  How can we be sure that the right security is in place?

Rather than immediately introducing the language of governance for analyzing SharePoint requirements for each respective business function, it may be appropriate to discreetly prepare some analysis tools and suppress the formality of a standardized approach.  Rather than referencing the importance of establishing a “governance steering committee”, it may be more appropriate to discuss the need to get people together on a regular basis to discuss what is and is not working with the SharePoint projects. And rather than discussing configuration management standards from deploying SharePoint features such as WSPs, it may be appropriate to discuss consistent practices for deploying customizations in SharePoint.

By taking this tact, you may be able to introduce important governance strategies without overwhelming those people new to SharePoint.  It also allows for a less formal approach to be taken towards governance topics which can evolve into a formality level that fits your organization.  As a general practice, we also find the notion of introducing a “governance light” strategy to be a positive one.  In this capacity, governance principles are slowly introduced in an iterative fashion and all constituencies can ease into the process.

We think these are key issues because for many new to the complexities of managing SharePoint, governance “is for someone else”.  All too often we hear that we are “too small”, “too big”, “too busy” or “just getting started” but before long there is a profusion of Sites, content, Meadata or approaches.

RussECM On Twitter - and here at SharePoint Governance.Org