Clarity. Direction. Confidence.
PLANNING FOR
GOVERNANCE
The Key to Successful SharePoint 2010 Solutions
Sue Hanley
President
Susan Hanley LLC
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About Me
Expertise: knowledge management, information
architecture, portals and collaboration solutions with a
focus on governance, user adoption, and metrics
President, Susan Hanley LLC. Co-Author: Essential
SharePoint 2010 and Essential SharePoint 2007
Co-Author: SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning
white paper from Microsoft
Led national Portals, Collaboration, and Content
Management practice for Dell
Director of Knowledge Management at American
Management Systems
http://www.susanhanley.com
Mother of three “millennials”
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Agenda
Why is Governance Planning so Important?
What are Key Governance Considerations for
SharePoint 2010 – What’s New?
Top Ten Things To Consider for SharePoint 2010
Governance Planning
Summary/Q&A
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As we’ve all (hopefully) learned,
SharePoint success is not just about
technology
20%
Support
Technology
Communications
Documentation
Policies
Training
Deployment
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It’s easy to make mistakes …
Not defining policies on what to use SharePoint for (and
what not to use it for)
Empowering users without appropriate training and
guidance
Letting users manage security when they have no clue
what they are doing
Not treating SharePoint like an enterprise application
Not treating information like an enterprise asset
Not planning for scale and/or growth
Not providing SharePoint as a centralized service for the
organization
Not testing the backup/recovery process
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… so it’s especially important to plan!
Avoid solution, team site, and content sprawl
Ensure that content quality is maintained for the life of
the solution
Provide a consistently high-quality user experience
Establish clear decision making authority and
escalation procedures
Ensure that the solution strategy is aligned with
business objectives
Ensure that content is retained in compliance with
record retention guidelines
Ensure that site designers understand best practices
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What makes Governance so important for
SharePoint 2010?
Social computing features means more types of content
to govern.
New capabilities for sharing metadata across multiple site
collections, and even server farms, means additional
planning and control in order to leverage.
User-friendly records management capabilities introduce
an opportunity to create and enforce your records
management plan.
More opportunities for users to customize their sites
with easy-to-apply themes, SharePoint Designer, and the
opportunity to create Sandbox Solutions.
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SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning
Top Ten
Identify an Inclusive Team
Start with “Framing” Decisions
Determine Your Deployment Model
Define a Clear Vision
Identify Roles and Responsibilities
Develop Guiding Principles
Decide Your Organizational Comfort Level with Social
Computing
Define Policies and Standards
Document the Plan
Socialize and Promote
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1. Getting Started | Be Inclusive
Start with a small team to
work on the Framing
Decisions
Engage a larger
governance
committee to
review decisions
IT
Training
HR
Communications
Knowledge
Management
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2. Start with Framing Decisions
Who will be allowed to set
up a new page/site within
the existing hierarchy?
Who will be allowed to
create a new level in the
navigation or promote an
existing site to the top level
of the navigation?
Can page owners redesign the page/site
layout? If yes, how much
of the page are they
allowed to modify?
Who is allowed to make
changes to the overall
branding for the portal?
Who is allowed to manage
metadata? For example,
change metadata types or
metadata values?
What processes/roles can
we assume for enterprise
management of metadata?
Who controls security on
pages/sites?
What is the default model
for access?
What kind of “penalties”
will be supported for noncompliance with
governance standards?
How will the Governance
Model be updated and
maintained?
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3. Determine Your Deployment Model |
One Size Does Not Fit All
Central
Portal
Division
Portals
• Centrally governed
• Fewer publishers
• Broad audience
Groups & Teams
Project Workspaces
My Sites
• Locally governed
• More publishers
• More restrictive audience (with the exception of My
Sites, which have enterprise-wide audiences)
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4. Establish a Clear Vision | Know What
You Want to Do!
Business Goals, such as:
Improve collaboration with partners
Share best practices and collaborate across teams with online
collaboration workspaces
Replace shared drives with searchable, organized document
repositories
Business Outcomes, such as:
Provide easier and more timely access to the information
employees need to get their work done
Provide easier and more effective mechanisms to move work
between business entities
Provide an organized "one stop shop" for information by making it
easier to find authoritative information
Improve the "time to talent," the speed with which new employees
become productive
Capture knowledge of retiring employees in a collaborative
environment
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5. Roles and Responsibilities | Identify the
Key Players
It takes a village!
Put the right team together… early
Use an upgrade as an opportunity to engage
Make sure every person in every role understands their
responsibilities
Don’t assume SharePoint can be managed with existing
resources (even if SharePoint is already in place).
Getting the right people in place is an important step in the
process.
Not all the roles need to be “net new.” They may just be different
responsibilities for existing roles.
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Enterprise Roles
Executive
Sponsor
Steering
Committee
Business Owner
IT Solution
Administrator
Technology
Support
Center of
Excellence
Metadata
Manager
Power Users
Community
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Site Roles
Approves request for site,
ultimately accountable for
content
Follows best
practices to
create site
design and
security plan
Manages the site
day-to-day.
Monitors site
security.
Serves as content
steward.
Uses site to
access and share
information. Has
the ability to
contribute content
to the site.
Has “read
only”
permissions
on the site..
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6. Develop Guiding Principles
Define organizational preferences that support
the vision
Reflect best practices
Make them memorable – your goal is to have
users internalize these statements.
Several types:
General
Security
Design
Content
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Example Guiding Principles
Guiding Principle
Even though SharePoint may be a new
vehicle for collaboration, SharePoint
content is governed by all general
policies pertaining to the use of IT
resources, including privacy, copyright,
records retention, confidentiality,
document security, etc.
Remember …
Existing rules still apply—would you want
your mother/customer/client to see this
picture? Should your
mother/customer/client be able to see
this content? Do we really own this
content?
Design to minimize training requirements
for end users: Use the best (and
simplest) feature for each business
objective.
Just because you can doesn’t mean
you should. You don’t really need to try
every new feature!
All sites or pages must have a clearly
identified content owner.
Make it obvious who owns the content on
all pages and sites.
Site Sponsors/Owners are
accountable, but everyone owns the
responsibility for content
management.
We’re all responsible for content
management.
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7. Think About Social Computing – What
“fits”?
What does “social” computing/software/Web 2.0
mean to your executives?
Make sure you know!
The absolute worst way to get started:
“We should be doing Web 2.0”
“The ‘millennials’ expect it.”
There is only one good reason to enable social
computing features:
You have a business problem to solve.
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Getting Social: Planning the use of
SharePoint 2010 Community Features
Clearly Identify the Business Problem
Identify Use Cases
Be Prepared to Respond to Barriers
Define Your Governance Plan
Define a “Do-able” Pilot Project
Prepare a Launch and Communications
Plan
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Social Computing Governance
Considerations
Don’t allow users to post anonymous content on your intranet –
own it!
“Owning” your content on the intranet helps ensure that everyone
plays by the rules and makes it very easy to ensure that governance
policies are followed.
My Sites
What is your organization comfortable with sharing?
Birthdays? (If HR or Legal is uncomfortable, what about “opt in?”)
Other “personal” information?
Set expectations about status updates.
Don’t assume everyone knows what is appropriate.
“Narrate your work.”
Set expectations for “Ask Me About.” What skills are relevant? How
well do you have to know about something?
Ratings: be clear about what you are asking people to rate
Tags: let them be personal, but provide good examples
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8. Define Policies and Standards
Policies define rules for SharePoint use
Usually driven by statutory, regulatory, or organizational requirements
Users are expected to meet policies without deviation
Standards describe best practices
Usually established to encourage consistent practices
Users may adopt the some elements of the standard that work for
them while not implementing others
Verify that your SharePoint polices and standards do not
conflict with broader organizational polices.
Publish policies and standards where users can easily find and
follow them.
Some policies may need to be published to all readers, while others
may need to be secured to protect the integrity of the application.
Regularly review and revise policies and standards to keep
them aligned to organizational needs.
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Examples of Policies and Standards
Content
Posting content to existing pages or sites
Posting content to the home page
Content auditing and review
Records retention
Design
Creating new sub-sites
Page layout and organization
Content types and metadata
Content-specific guidelines/policies
Security
Branding
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9. Document the Plan
Make it “consumable”
Keep it alive!
Include:
Vision statement
Roles and responsibilities
Guiding principles
Policies and standards
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Governance Plan Example
Four audience-targeted sections
Supplemented with “cheat sheets,” guides, lists, and stuff
“Training” on main topics
Name
Description
Primary Audience
1
Guiding
Principles
Governance overview, including description
of roles and responsibilities and overall
governance model
All Users
2
Content
Standards
and
Guidelines
Overview of standards and best practices
for publishing
Users with Content
Contribution
privileges
3
Design
Standards
and
Guidelines
Overview of standards and best practices
for site design
Users with Site
Design privileges
(Site Designers)
4
Operations
Policies
Operational guidelines, including a
description of the operational environments
Portal
Administrators
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10. Socialize and Promote
It’s not enough to just
write it down
Find champions
Communicate persistently
– use “serious anecdotes”
to drive home the value
proposition
Be responsive to
feedback
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Summary
Establish a Governance Plan to ensure quality and relevance of content
and to ensure that all users understand their roles and responsibilities.
Keep your governance model simple. Solutions need a strong
governance model, but they don’t need complicated models with lots of
bureaucracy.
Don’t make the solution itself more complicated than it needs to be. Be
careful about “over designing.” Just because SharePoint has a cool
feature doesn’t mean that you need to deploy it—at least not right away.
Ensure that all users with design or full control privileges have internalized
your design guiding principles and that content contributors understand
guiding principles related to content.
Think about how you will ensure compliance with your Governance
Plan over time, particularly for highly visible sites.
An effective Governance Plan doesn’t have to constrain every
move—it has to provide guidance to users to ensure that your
solution remains effective and vibrant over time.
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Resources
Microsoft site
summarizing
governance
resources for
SharePoint
2010
http://technet.microsoft.
com/enus/sharepoint/ff800826.
aspx
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Clarity. Direction. Confidence.
THANK YOU!
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session evaluation!
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