Planning for Governance

The most successful Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 sites are those that have well-organized, fresh content. They foster a team atmosphere and make the organization more efficient. And employees not only rely on them constantly, they are active in coming up with new ways to use them. But it takes careful planning to enable this efficient and productive workforce.

Governance – the rules that address how the site will be set up, organized, and managed – is a critical issue. Companies that invest too little on this effort often end up with poorly organized Intranets that their end users do not or cannot use. Without proper attention to governance, you could have the different departments and individual employees “doing their own thing,” making it difficult for them to collaborate.

When you are planning for the governance of your Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment, it will help to think about these top 8 points:

1. Assign all sites an owner who maintains the content and plans for migration and updates.
2. Deploy enough servers to meet the needs of your users.
3. Plan your service level agreements in advance, make them public, and follow them.
4. Train end users and support staff as part of your governance plan.
5. Monitor usage reporting to predict growth and future needs.
6. Design and put into practice a communication plan.
7. Plan for security issues - this may include hiring a partner resource to implement.
8. Delete unused sites as a part of your governance plan to avoid confusion and ‘clutter’.

You should address governance early in your deployment. Here are more key issues your governance plan should address:

Relevant Data

For end users, one of the biggest turn-offs is finding outdated, irrelevant information. Without clear policies to keep content fresh and up-to-date, your intranet can become a document junkyard.

Here are some steps you can take to prevent this problem:

• Set quotas. If you limit the amount of storage space available, end users and departments will work to make sure that only the best, most recent, and relevant content is online. Be prepared to take a “get tough” approach if they aren’t actively deleting obsolete data. Policies that manage the lifecycle of data improve the smooth running of any company.
• Chargeback model. Even if you cannot enforce absolute quotas, you may be able to create pseudo-quotas by making departments pay for their usage. Consider what metrics you will use, such as the number of sites, the amount of storage, or the amount of activity. As costs rise, users will be motivated to manage their data better. You could also charge more for premium services, such as custom templates, line-of-business integration, and other special development. The downside to consider is that if you push the costs to the departments, they may be less enthusiastic about using this. So set usage limits to reasonable amounts, and be flexible on any chargeback model you design.
• Expiration dates. Outdated content is such a problem because when it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. Unless you’re actively checking for content that isn’t used anymore, it’s not going anywhere. Consider policies to monitor the age of content and the amount of time that has passed since it was last used. Purge accordingly.

Usage Policies

Consistency is essential to the success of your deployment. If each group uses a radically different design and different processes, end users can get frustrated. Your governance plan should include policies to ensure a consistent user interface.

Here are some issues to consider:

• Ownership. Who owns sites and Web parts? Who supports them? Who deploys them? Who decides the goals? Does each group use Office SharePoint Server 2007 as it pleases, or does top management specify a common goal?
• Usage policies. What can the owners do with their sites without involving IT? Can they use SharePoint Designer, custom Web parts, or SQL data sources? How much customization, if any, is allowed? Who can own a site? What types of sites do you provision? Making policies that cover when user self-help ends and IT support begins will help avoid frustration for both sides.
• Branding. How can you create a consistently good experience for your end users and keep the sense of company ownership?
• Room to grow. How will you manage and support the ad hoc unstructured collaboration?

Roles and Terms

Who’s doing what? It’s important to specify terms so that the responsibilities are clear. Your governance plan should define:

• Clear roles and responsibilities for initiating Office SharePoint Server 2007 technologies.
• Strategic teams to address strategic issues.
• Processes for addressing complex issues that cross feature boundaries.

You may also want to establish a change control board. Decide who will be on the board, what it will review, and how often the board will meet to change rules or manage exceptions.

Support-Level Agreements

Your governance plan should also define your role and obligations.

• Create a service level agreement around the length of time and approvals necessary to create a site.
• Establish service-level agreements for problem resolution through the help desk.
• Negotiate performance service level agreements for the first load of a site, subsequent loads of a site, and performance at remote locations.
• Establish a maintenance window. When and how long is an acceptable window for downtime for patching, and pushing changes out to the environment that require worker process resets?
• Establish a Recovery Time Objective. How long can SharePoint be down for unplanned downtime?
• Establish a Recovery Point Objective. How long can the business tolerate a recovery from a software, hardware, and data center disaster? This will help you in your disaster recovery plan. Be sure to test your plan on a recurring basis.

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