SharePoint/Office 365 Governance Questions
http://tiny.cc/SharePointGovQuestions
March 3, 2015
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
Contents


Vision and Overview – Core Team
Enterprise Decisions – Core Team

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
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Compliance
Training
Access
Provisioning
Enterprise Decisions – + Legal/Records Management

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Enterprise Decisions – + Communications + HR + Legal

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Personal Sites/Social Features
Enterprise Decisions – + Communications

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
Records Management
Branding and Functionality
Information Architecture (Branding, Page Layout)
The key to
successful plans for
SharePoint
governance starts
with having the
right conversations
with the right
individuals at the
right time.
Enterprise Decisions – Core Team


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Information Architecture (Content Organization)
Content Life-cycle Management
Operational Decisions

Roles and Responsibilities – Core Team

Site/Solution-Specific Decisions – “Owners” of each solution
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
If you start with the
right questions, you
can build your
governance plan
from the answers.
2
Vision and Overview
3
A typical SharePoint deployment has multiple solution areas. The vision and
goals may be different for each one – along with the governance policies
and guidelines.
Intranet
(Home Page)
Intranet (Subsites/secondary
pages)
Departmental Portals
Enterprise Social Content
Personal Sites – User Profile
Team Sites
Personal Sites – Personal Content
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
4
Vision and Overview


Who are the solution stakeholders?
What is the vision for each aspect of the
solution that apply (intranet,
departmental portals, team sites, social
computing, personal sites) and how does
it relate to each key stakeholder?



How is the vision statement translated into a
set of business objectives for the solution? (510 key outcomes that will connect with key
stakeholders)
How will each stakeholder determine if the
business objectives are successful?
What are the key organizational initiatives
that the solution is designed to address?

In other words, which specific strategic
objectives for the organization does the
intranet (and each other type of SharePoint
solution) align with?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
• The goal is to describe how the
solution relates to core business
outcomes.
• This is not a vision for the
features of SharePoint that you
want to leverage. It’s a vision for
how the solution is intended to
integrate into the flow of work.
• The outcome of answering these
questions (which hopefully were
answered at the start of the
project) will help you develop the
messaging and context for using
SharePoint and following
governance guidelines.
• The goal in answering these
questions is to identify a set of
core business outcomes that will
help answer the “what’s in it for
me?” and “why do I need to pay
attention to this?” questions for
each stakeholder.
5
Template for Documenting the Vision/Overview – create
one row for each relevant area of your solution
Solution
Area
Vision
Type of
Content
Ownership/
Accountability
Frequency/Type of
Review
Governance Overview
Intranet
Home Page
Targeted
information
based on users
role
• News
• Important
Links
• Personal KPIs
• People and
Culture
Corporate
Communications
• Ongoing review for
news
• All documents and
pages reviewed at
least annually
• Tightly controlled
• Formal content
management processes
• Content managed by
Corporate Communications
Intranet Subsites
Departmental
Portals
Team Sites
Personal Sites
– Social
Content
Personal Sites
– User Profile
Personal Sites
– Personal
Content
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
6
If enterprise social is part of your solution, talk about these
topics in conjunction with your vision and objectives:




What are the specific business objectives and strategic drivers for
enterprise social?
What are the business-specific “moments of engagement” where
social will drive value?
Is there an existing intranet social media policy that applies to
SharePoint or can be adapted to cover internal social networking?
Who are the key stakeholders for the solution?

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Who is involved in content creation?
Who is involved in content consumption?
Who will be impacted?
Is the organization aligned on the risk versus reward trade-off
associated with open and collaborative conversations?
Have these expectations been communicated?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
7
Enterprise Decisions – Compliance,
Training, Provisioning, Access, and Records
8
Enterprise Policy Questions - Compliance
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What types of overall corporate policies for information
management, business, or technology management apply
to the solution? Are there existing legal, IT and information
management policies that SharePoint solutions must
follow?
• Use of IT Resources
• Electronic Communications
• Social Media Policy
• Protection of Personally Identifiable Information
• Records Management
How are these policies enforced in other systems? (Look for
opportunities to leverage existing processes and have the
conversation about how governance within SharePoint can
be aligned with governance in other systems.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
9
Enterprise Policy Questions - Compliance
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Is there an expectation around how often content or entire
sites need to be reviewed to ensure that information is kept
up-to-date and is reliable?
• For example, is it required that all sites be “re-certified”
on an annual basis?
• For example, is it required that individual documents be
reviewed on an annual or more frequent basis?
• Do the same review requirements apply to all types of
sites?
For each solution area, who is accountable to ensure that
policies are followed?
How will accountability be evaluated?
• How often?
• By whom?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
10
Enterprise Policy Questions - Compliance
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What processes must be in place to ensure compliance?
Is there a penalty for non-compliance? If so, how will it be
enforced? Are the penalties different for different types of
sites/solutions?
• If the governance plan says that page and site owners
are responsible for content management, are you
prepared to de-commission pages where no one in the
organization will step up to page ownership
responsibilities?
• Who will be responsible for making these decisions?
Is a third-party tool needed to help ensure and manage
compliance?
What kind or types of reporting is available or needs to be
created to monitor compliance?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
11
Enterprise Policy Questions – Governance Plan
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Who will have responsibilities for maintaining the
“governance plan” (or the artifacts, training, and other
processes where governance information is “consumed” by
key stakeholders)?
Where will governance information “live”?
How will it be communicated to users?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
12
Enterprise Policy Questions - Training
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
There are different roles and types of users involved in any SharePoint deployment. Business users, in
particular, are empowered with new capabilities for which they are likely to need training.
What are the expectations around user training (who takes
which training)? For example, are new Site Owners
expected to take any type of training before they get their
“super powers”? If you are using Community Sites or
Community Features, are Moderators required to have
training before they get their super powers?
What are the plans to incorporate governance policies and
best practices into SharePoint training?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
13
Enterprise Policy Questions – Access (On Premises)
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Are there any overall access restrictions? (specific AD or
other groups permitted or not permitted to access the
solution as a whole or individual types of sites)
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
14
Enterprise Policy Questions – Office 365
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Are there any overall access restrictions? (specific AD or
other groups permitted or not permitted to access the
solution as a whole or individual types of sites)
If you are in an Office 365 environment, can site owners on
ALL site collections invite external people to access
content? On just SOME site collections? If so, which ones?
Are there restrictions on specific types of sites where
external access is or is not permitted?
Do you need or want to allow anonymous access to your
Office 365 documents? On all site collections? On a caseby-case basis?
Do you need to be able to track:
• Specific site collections where external access has been
enabled
• Specific sites where external users have been given
access
• Specific documents that have been shared with external
users, both authenticated and anonymously
• Which external users have access to your Office 365
environment
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
15
Enterprise Policy Questions – Provisioning
(Note: these questions will need to be addressed for each type of portal/ solution.)
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What is the provisioning process to get a new site
collection? Does it vary by type of site requested?
Who can request a new site collection?
How is the type of site collection matched to the business
need?
How is this decision reviewed (or does it need to be)?
What is the process to provision a team or community site
within a site collection?
How will sites and site collections be de-commissioned?
What is the plan for content archiving?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
16
Enterprise Policy Questions – Enhancement Provisioning
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What processes need to be in place to request new features
or capabilities for the solution (or provide feedback in
general)?
Who will be accountable to review and manage
enhancement requests?
What will the policy be for installing third-party apps?
• For one site or group?
• For the enterprise?
Who determines which apps can be installed? How will the
process be reviewed?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
17
Enterprise Policy Questions – Records Management
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
How do the corporate records and discovery policies address:
• Intranet pages
• Intranet documents
• Document versions
• Intranet news articles
• Intranet images
• Team site documents
• Community or Team site Discussion Lists
• Other Community or Team site lists and images
• Newsfeed/Yammer conversations
• Documents stored in Yammer
• Individual user content in OneDrive for Business
• Content in SharePoint Online vs. on prem (for hybrid
environments).
Are there specific events in SharePoint that need to be logged for
audit purposes? Are the right reporting tools in place to ensure
that this can happen – both on prem and in the cloud?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
18
Enterprise Policy Questions – Records Management for
Enterprise Social (Yammer)
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Are there any types of Yammer conversations that are considered
business records? If so, how will they be identified?
Do you need to implement a way to archive conversations that are
business records? If so, is there a plan to do so? (Note that there is
no current way to automate this for Yammer without writing some
custom processes or using a third-party archiving tool like
Smarsh.)
Can users upload documents to Yammer? This is an “on” or “off”
feature.
If you allow users to upload documents to Yammer, do your
records management policies apply to these documents? If so,
how will you enforce this?
Should you consider conversations and associated documents for
work-in-progress only? As an example, one organization has an
automatic purge of any documents stored in Yammer after 18
months. Owners get an email before the purge to encourage them
to move the content to a more permanent "knowledge base" if the
document needs to be retained.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
19
Enterprise Decisions - Personal
Sites/Social Features
20
Personal Sites/Social Features

This section covers the following topics:




User Profile
Activity Feeds (Newsfeed or Yammer)
User Content (e.g. OneDrive for Business, blogs)
Community Sites (Discussion Forums)
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
21
User Profile
22
User Profile Review Approach


For the conversation about the User Profile, make sure that
representatives from HR as well as Corporate Communications are
available to participate.
Consider each “out of the box” attribute (listed on the following
pages) as well as any custom attributes that you may want to add.
For each attribute listed, discuss:




Should this attribute be included?
If so, can/should it be authoritatively sourced?
You will want to evaluate what information you can import from AD,
such as the office location, office phone, manager, etc. The attributes
on the following pages are those that are available by default in a
brand new SharePoint site. You will likely have a rich collection of
profile attributes in addition to these that you can use to synchronize
employee information with your identity management system.
For each custom attribute, identify whether it will be entered by the
user or “sourced” from an authoritative system. Review how you will
source the values and how the synchronization will occur.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
23
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint 2013 User Profile –
Basic Information
Attribute
Name
User Instructions
in SharePoint
Considerations
Sample Guidance
About Me
Provide a personal
description
expressing what you
would like others to
know about you.
• This statement is displayed to all
people who look at the user’s
profile.
• It should be brief and
“consumable.”
• Use the About me statement to talk about your
current role and responsibilities.
• Keep the message brief so that others can
“consume” it quickly.
• Use the 90/10 rule as you create content – about
90% professional and 10% personal (if you are
comfortable sharing personal information).
• For some examples of About me descriptions,
check out the profiles of [Link to Name] and [Link
to Name].
Picture
Upload a picture to
help others easily
recognize you at
meetings and events.
• Do you want users to be able to
upload their own picture?
• What kind of picture is
acceptable?
• Are there legal or privacy issues
associated with pictures?
• Can users “opt out if you are
planning to source the picture
from, as an example, your badge
pictures? (which everyone hates,
by the way)
• Until you upload a picture, your profile will show a
silhouette.
• Choose a picture in which you are the only subject.
• The picture should only show your head and
shoulders.
• Make sure the picture is “sized for the web” –
around 90 KB maximum.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
24
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint 2013 User Profile –
Basic Information
Attribute
Name
User Instructions
in SharePoint
Considerations
Sample Guidance
Ask Me
About
Update your "Ask Me
About" with topics
you can help people
with, such as your
responsibilities or
areas of expertise.
• Attributes entered by users are
stored in the shared keywords
list so that they are reusable by
others.
• These attributes are used by
search to return both people and
documents when someone
searches for that term.
• When you click on the Ask Me
About item in the profile, a
newsfeed post (if you are using
the Newsfeed) is created
@mentioning the person and
with the term as the first word.
• It’s a good idea to pre-populate
shared keywords with common
terms for your organization so
that when people start typing
values, they will see the list of
pre-defined, correctly spelled
terms.
• How well does someone have to
know a topic in order to list it
here?
• Use this area to identify up to five or so
professional (work related) topics that you can
help people with, such as your responsibilities or
areas of expertise.
• In addition to those areas that are your primary
areas of responsibility, list topics where you have
extensive experience and can assist or educate
others.
• Tip: Separate values with semi-colons. Do not use
commas to separate terms. for example, if you
enter X, Y, and Z as your term, the system will
replace your entry with three separate values (and
the third will be called “and Z”). Use spaces to
separate words that together form the term.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
25
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint 2013 User Profile –
Contact Information
Attribute
Name
User Instructions in
SharePoint
Considerations
Mobile
phone
This number will be
shown on your profile.
Also, it will be used for
text message (SMS)
alerts.
• Does your organization provide
staff with mobile phones? Can this
be sourced from an authoritative
source?
• Are there any privacy issues
associated with mobile phones?
Fax
• Is this attribute relevant?
Home
Phone
• How do your privacy policies affect
asking users to enter their home
phone number?
Office
Location
Enter your current
location. (e.g. China,
Tokyo, West Campus)
Time Zone
Select the time zone for
your current location.
We will use this
information to show the
local time on your
profile page.
Assistant
(Selected with “People
Picker.”)
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
Sample Guidance
• By design, this is where someone
could enter where they are TODAY,
but it may be difficult to get people
to fill this in.
• Consider whether your users will
find this attribute useful and if so,
be sure to provide expectations
about how it should be used.
26
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint 2013 User Profile –
Details
Attribute
Name
User Instructions in
SharePoint
Considerations
Sample Guidance
Past
Projects
Provide information on
previous projects,
teams or groups.
• How many past projects?
• Will users be expected to keep this
information up to date? If so, how
will you make that happen?
• Will asking for it add value?
• Optionally list the names of previous projects
you have worked on.
Skills
Include skills used to
perform your job or
previous projects.
(e.g. C++, Public
Speaking, Design)
• Will users be expected to keep this
information up to date? If so, how
will you make that happen?
• How much guidance do you want
to include about how facile you are
with that skill? Does it mater?
• Is there an another system from
which this information can be
sourced, e.g., your HRIS?
• List skills used to perform your job or skills
for previous projects. If you speak or read a
language other than English, list it in this
section.
• You can list any skill you wish to share – even
if it may not be related to your current job.
Schools
List the schools you
have attended.
• Since there are many ways of
spelling colleges and universities,
consider “priming” the keywords list
with common values prior to
launching.
• List schools you have attended.
• As you start to type, wait for the system to
offer suggestions – in case you are not the
first person to enter this value.
Birthday
Enter the date in the
following format: April
25
• Is it OK to ask for this information
even if it is optional? Some
organizations feel that it is not a
good idea to leave this field in the
profile.
• Sharing your birthday (month/day) is
optional.
• Enter your birthday only if you wish to share
this information. People who are “following”
you will see a notification in their Newsfeed
on your birthday.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
27
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint 2013 User Profile –
Details, continued
Attribute
Name
User Instructions in
SharePoint
Considerations
Sample Guidance
Interests
Share personal and
business related
interests. We will help
you keep in touch with
activities related to
these interests through
events in your
newsfeed.
• Can personal interests be included? Do
you want to provide guidance regarding
the type of acceptable interests?
• Since there are many ways of spelling
and defining interests, consider
“priming” the keywords list with
common values prior to launching –
especially terms that you want to keep
track of. (Note that the values for
Interests are sourced from the same list
as Skills and Ask Me About.)
• Will users be expected to keep this
information up to date? If so, how will
you make that happen? Is it important
for the business outcomes?
• This may be very confusing for your
users because interest keywords and
hashtags seem like they should be the
same – but they are not. Interests are
sourced from enterprise keywords and
listing interests generates an action
when content is tagged authoritatively
or manually by a user using a system
keyword. Hashtags are sourced from the
hashtag term store, which is only
associated (right now) with Newsfeed
and Discussion posts. Neither of these
terms are the same (currently) as the
hashtags in Yammer so you will really
need to think about how you want to
communicate (and/or use) this attribute.
• Share any personal and business related
interests that you wish to share. These
should be topics that are of interest to
you that you would like to learn more
about.
• As your interests change, be sure to
update this list to add or remove values.
• When activities or content associated
with these terms are tagged, you will get
a notification in your Newsfeed.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
28
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint 2013 User Profile –
Newsfeed Settings
Attribute
Name
User Instructions in
SharePoint
Considerations
Sample Guidance (for SharePoint 2013
Newsfeed)
Newsfeed General
N/A
• Newsfeed or Yammer, that is the
question? If you are using
SharePoint Online, then Microsoft’s
guidance is to replace the Newsfeed
with Yammer. If you are using
SharePoint on premises, you will
need to make a decision about both
integration (not fully complete) and
where your data will live (Yammer is
cloud-ONLY).
• Some considerations:
• How will users maintain their
profiles?
• What will the search experience
be for your users?
• Hashtags and @Mentions in the
SharePoint 2013 Newsfeed are
also used and integrated with
Discussion Lists. If you are using
Yammer, however, the hashtags
are not integrated with the
SharePoint hashtags. Be sure you
have a plan to communicate what
to expect to your users.
• The Newsfeed settings allow you to control
which activities you get an email about and
which activities you want to share.
• This is also a place where you can maintain
the list of hashtags you want to follow. You
can leave this list blank initially or start typing
terms that describe your interests. Hashtags
must be single words.
• Note that this is not the only way SharePoint
can alert you about content via email. In
addition to these automatic notifications, you
can also set up an Alert on a document or a
library or list so that you will get an email
when content changes. Alert emails can be
restricted to a specific time of day or day of
the week. Newsfeed emails are sent
immediately.
• You will probably want to start out by leaving
all the default values checked. If you find that
you are getting too many emails or that your
Newsfeed is too cluttered, you can adjust the
settings on this page to align with how you
want to work.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
29
Enterprise Policy Questions – SharePoint User Profile –
Newsfeed Settings, continued
Attribute
Name
User Instructions in
SharePoint
Considerations
Sample Guidance (for SharePoint 2013
Newsfeed)
Followed #
Tags
Stay up-to-date on
topics that interest you
by following #tags.
Posts with these #tags
will show up in your
newsfeed.
• Since there are many ways of
spelling and defining terms,
consider “priming” the hashtags list
with common values prior to
launching – especially terms that
you want to keep track of.
• These are not maintained in the
same list of keywords and will have
to be created separately.
• You can leave this list blank initially or start
typing terms that describe your interests.
Hashtags must be single words.
• You may not be familiar with the term
Followed #Tags, which is read as “followed
hashtags.” When you post or reply in your
Newsfeed, you can associate a topic by using
a hashtag.
• To assign a hashtag, place the number
symbol # in front of the term that you want
to include in the tag. SharePoint returns a list
of terms that match what you have entered.
• When a post contains tags, the Newsfeed
displays an activity related to that tag and
users who follow that tag see the activity in
their Newsfeed.
• Using tags helps focus attention on a specific
topic and can be used to filter posts and
replies in search.
• You can use the Followed #Tags area of your
profile to set up a list of terms that interest
you to ensure that you see content posted
by others that has been tagged with your
term.
Note: this applies to
SharePoint 2013 with
Newsfeed only. If you
are replacing the
Newsfeed with
Yammer, consider
hiding the Newsfeedrelated fields in user
profiles to eliminate
confusion.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
30
Activity Feed Use and Management
31
Enterprise Policy Questions – Activity Feed Use and
Management
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Want type of guidance do you want to provide about what
types of conversations are appropriate for the Newsfeed or
Yammer versus other ways to communicate? (for example,
email, discussion forums, instant messaging, etc.) (i.e. “what
goes where”)
Do you want to provide guidance about mentioning
someone in the activity feed using an @mention or posting
a photo of someone without asking permission? (for
example, not excessively @mentioning the same person)
Is there an existing policy for social media that applies to
the activity feed (or needs to be updated)?
Are there specific topics or content that should not be
included in posts? For example, in one legal
implementation, attorneys were advised not to mention any
specifics of open cases in newsfeed posts.
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
32
Enterprise Policy Questions – Activity Feed Use and
Management, continued
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Do you need to monitor the use of particular terms or
words in conversations to ensure compliance? (both good
and bad)
• You can use tools (such as OpenQ or Feedcop) to look
for the use of sensitive or restricted terms.
• You can also monitor for words like Created to look for
the creation of new groups and invite new group
admins into a group for group owners. You can then
enlist group owners to help enforce governance policies
and make group owners aware of their responsibilities.
This can help distribute the responsibility for
compliance.
How will activity feed policies and guidance be enforced
and communicated?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
33
Enterprise Policy Questions - Communities
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Can anyone set up a new community or Yammer group?
Do all communities/groups need a community moderator
or manager?
Are there standard policies that need to be included in each
Community/group site?
Do community/group moderators need special training?
Is there a documented list of expectations for
community/group moderators?
Do moderators have to be employees?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
34
User Content
35
Enterprise Policy Questions – User Content (OneDrive)
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Will all users have OneDrive for Business?
Are there any restrictions on types of content or quantity of
storage available to users in OneDrive for Business?
What type of guidance will be provided regarding content
that can be stored in personal OneDrives vs. team
collaboration spaces?
What type of guidance will be provided regarding storing
documents in Yammer? Is it allowed? Discouraged? “It
depends?”
Can all users have a blog? If so, is there special
guidelines/training for users who are creating blogs? Are
there any existing guidelines?
Are there guidelines needed regarding comments on blog
posts?
Who will be responsible for monitoring comments on blog
posts?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
36
Enterprise Decisions – Branding and
Information Architecture
37
Enterprise Policy Questions – Branding and Enterprise
Functionality
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Is there an overall design style guide that all sites are
required to follow?
Who is responsible for branding decisions?
Can users with permissions change the theme for a team
site?
Will there be a library of acceptable/approved team site
logos? If not, can users with permissions add a logo/icon
of their choice?
Is SharePoint Designer permitted?
Is the use of InfoPath permitted?
Are any third party tools/apps permitted? Restricted?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
38
Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Navigational Architecture
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Who is responsible for managing the navigational
architecture for the solution?
What is the process for requesting new “nodes” in the
navigational architecture?
How will the effectiveness of the navigational architecture
be evaluated over time?
Who determines which sites are promoted to which
audiences on the Sites page?
What is the process for requesting “promotion” on the Sites
page?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
39
Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Page Layout Architecture
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Does the layout of each site home page have to be
consistent? Can owners of sites make changes to the layout
and lists and libraries on the site?
Are there specific page templates that site owners/solution
analysts must leverage? (Note that you should think about
different types of solutions and whether there are or should
be different page templates for each solution.)
If Site Owners can make changes, can they use any
available web part or app on or is there a specific list?
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Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Page Layout Architecture,
continued
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Are there guidelines about placement of certain types of
content on pages? For example, is there an expectation
about what type of content will be “above the fold” or in
the Quick Launch?
If there are no templates, how will training about page
layout best practices be communicated to users who are
empowered with permissions to add content and web parts
to pages?
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Enterprise Policy Questions – IA: Content Organization
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Are there enterprise content types?
Is there any enterprise-wide mandatory core metadata? (for
example, records retention codes)
Are there enterprise-wide supplemental terms? (Managed
metadata in the term store)
Do all site owners have to use these terms where they are
relevant? If so, how will information about enterprise terms
be communicated?
How is the overall metadata architecture going to be
maintained?
Can users request new terms? If so, what is the process?
Do we need guidance about how to use terms?
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Enterprise Policy Questions – Content Life-cycle
Management
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What type of information is most important for success?
What is the process for creating and maintaining critical
information in each area of the solution? For example, is
content created on private sites and then “pushed” to
public areas? Is content created and consumed on the
same site?
What types of processes are needed to ensure that critical
content is created and maintained?
Are there specific information management policies that
apply to different types of content?
What type of retention policy is applicable for
Newsfeed/Yammer content? Is it the same as email?
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Enterprise Policy Questions – Content Life-cycle
Management, continued
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Who “owns” published documents? Contributor?
Department? Does it depend on the site or site type? Is the
“owner” responsible for content life-cycle management,
including management of inactive content?
Are there any overall requirements for dealing with inactive
content? Does it get archived? (If so, how?) Does it get
deleted? (Is this dependent on the type of site?)
Are there specific policies for document versions, including
how many versions should be retained?
Should retention rules be manually enforced or do we need
to invest in automated processes or third-party tools?
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Enterprise Policy Questions – Content Life-cycle
Management – Specific Content Types
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Are there any specific content requirements for user’s
personal content on OneDrive for Business?
Are there specific policies or guidance for non-document
types of content?
• News
• Links
• Discussion Posts
• Data Files
• Multi-media files (e.g. video)
• Images
• Yammer/Newsfeed posts
• List items
If a video or other multi-media content was produced more
than X years ago, does it need to be re-made?
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Enterprise Operational Decisions
46
Enterprise Policy Questions – Operations and Support
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
For each type of content or collection of sites:
• What type of availability is required?
• What are the expectations for disaster recovery and
backup?
• What are the expectations for response time?
• What is the impact on storage, network infrastructure,
or other elements of the IT backbone?
What type of environments are needed to support the
business outcomes (for example, development, QA, and
production)?
How will migration be supported from one environment to
another?
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Enterprise Policy Questions – Operations and Support
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What types of processes are needed to ensure that the
solution infrastructure is maintained and monitored?
How will performance or infrastructure issues be escalated
and resolved?
How do Site Owners request support for custom
development? Support in general (if they don’t know if they
even need custom development)?
What are the policies for third-party apps?
What type of support infrastructure will be available to
support end users and Site Owners/Solution Analysts?
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Roles and Responsibilities
49
It takes a village … sample Roles for SharePoint Deployments
Roles for each site or solution
Enterprise Roles
SharePoint
Executive
Sponsor
SharePoint
Administrator
SharePoint
Training and
Communications
Solution Steering
Committee
Site Sponsor
SharePoint IT
Owner
Application
Development
Team
SharePoint
Coaches
/Evangelists
Solution Business
Owner
Site Owner/
Solution Analyst
Intranet
Steering
Committee
Intranet
Information
Architect
SharePoint Power
Users Community
Solution IT Owner
and Support
Team
Site Contact
Intranet
Business Owner
Intranet
Page/Site
Owner, Author,
Visitor
Solution
Information
Architect
Site Member
Help Desk
50
Roles and Responsibilities





Who is the business owner for the solution?
Who is responsible for technical management of the environment,
including hardware and software implementation, configuration, and
maintenance? Who can install new Web Parts, features, or other code
enhancements?
Who will be responsible for ongoing evaluation to ensure that the
solution continues to meet business and technical expectations?
Who is allowed or who will be responsible for setting up new sites? If
this responsibility is controlled by the IT department, then it is likely
that IT will have to negotiate a service level agreement (SLA) for site
set up responsiveness with the business stakeholders. If this
responsibility is delegated, users will need training to ensure that
they follow acceptable conventions for naming, storage, and so on.
Who has access to each page/site? Who can grant access to each?
Some organizations do not allow individual site owners to manage
security on their sites. If this is something you decide to do, who will
be responsible for managing security?
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Roles and Responsibilities, continued


Who is responsible for managing metadata? Who can set up or
request new content types or site columns? How much central
control do you want to have over the values in site columns?
If the governance plan says that page and site owners are
responsible for content management, are you prepared to decommission pages where no one in the organization will step up to
page ownership responsibilities? Who will be responsible for making
these decisions?
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Roles and Responsibilities, continued

How do the existing organizational roles map to the roles required
for the new solution?





Are there additional skills that people need to acquire?
Are there additional resources that need to be hired?
Is there a requirement for training to have a specific role overall or
for an individual site?
Who will be accountable to ensure that lessons learned in various
implementations across the organization are effectively shared with
the rest of the organization?
Do Site Owners have to be employees? (for example, can a
contractor be a Site Owner?)
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Site/Solution-Specific Decisions
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Site/Solution-Specific Questions – General Policies
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Who can request the creation of this type of site? Is there an
approval process? Is there a step to make sure that the site is
needed (rather than just being added to an existing site)?
How critical is availability, backup, response time to this site type?
Do special SLA’s need to be established with IT?
Who is accountable for ensuring that the content on the site
follows governance policies and guidelines?
How will you ensure that the purpose and relevance of the
solutions or site has not changed?
Who determines when the site is no longer needed?
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Site/Solution-Specific Questions – General Policies,
continued
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
How does this type of site get de-commissioned? When that
happens, what happens to the content?
How critical is availability, backup, response time to this site type?
Do special SLA’s need to be established with IT?
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Site/Solution-Specific Questions – Permissions
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Who is accountable for determining and assigning
permissions to access the site?
Is there a requirement for training to have specific
permissions?
Who can publish content?
Can users outside the standard security permissions be
invited in to the site? Note: external users can be prevented
from access globally (for SharePoint Online deployments)
but users with manage permissions privileges control which
internal users access the site.
Are there any Site/Solution-Specific restrictions for Site
Owners/Solution Analysts?
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Site/Solution-Specific Questions – Layout and Navigation
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
Who can request a new top level site of this type? What is the
process?
Who “owns” the persistent top level navigation? What is the
process for updating?
Can the Site Owner create sub-sites? If so, are there restrictions?
Does the layout of pages in the site need to be consistent? Are
there specific things that cannot be changed?
Can Site Owners use any available web part or app on or is there a
specific list?
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Site/Solution-Specific Questions – Content Life-cycle
Management
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What type of information is most important for success?
What is the process for creating and maintaining critical
information in each area of the site?
What types of processes are needed to ensure that critical
content is created and maintained?
Are there specific information management policies that apply to
different types of content?
Are there specific policies or guidance for different types of
content that are different from the enterprise policies?
Who “owns” published documents? Contributor? Department?
Does it depend on the site or site type? Is the “owner”
responsible for content life-cycle management, including
management of inactive content?
©2015 SUSAN HANLEY LLC
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Site/Solution-Specific Questions – Content Life-cycle
Management
Key Governance Question
Decision/Answer
What happens to old or irrelevant content? How often does
content have to be reviewed? By whom? Can content be deleted?
Are there specific policies for document versions, including how
many versions should be retained?
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