3. What Is in the Governance Plan?
An effective governance plan provides a framework
for design standards, information architecture, service-level
agreements, infrastructure maintenance, and your overall measurement
plan. It is intended to summarize and tie together, not replace, the documents that describe these activities in
detail. Referencing this related content rather than embedding it in
the governance plan will keep the plan from becoming unnecessarily
bloated and unmanageable.
In addition, the governance plan should reference
all of your existing IT policies for topics such as the appropriate use
of technology resources, confidentiality of content, and records
retention. As you begin to deploy more and more “Web 2.0” functionality
into your environment, new IT policies will emerge that will impact
SharePoint governance. Again, your plan doesn’t need to include these emerging policies, but should reference them where appropriate.
The governance plan is a business document, its
primary audience being the business (content) owners of your SharePoint
sites and the users who produce and consume the content on those sites.
Because all users can effectively produce content in SharePoint via
social tags and ratings (if you allow these in your solution), everyone
in the organization needs to be familiar with the governance plan.
In addition to these elements, your plan will likely
also include a section that references procedures for common tasks such
as requesting a new site, requesting a new shared Content Type or
attribute, requesting a new site template, and so on. Publish these
procedures so site owners can easily find and follow the processes you
define.
As you think about creating your governance plan,
consider how users will consume and internalize the content in your
plan. There is a great quote from Blaise Pascal that is often
misattributed to Mark Twain (and others). In the original French, the
quote reads “Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue parceque je n’ai pas eu
le loisir de la faire plus courte.” Loosely translated: “If I had more
time, I would have written a shorter letter.” Think
about this quote as you are working on your governance plan because
it’s very easy for these documents to get very, very long. The longer
they are, the more difficult it is for users to digest them. Putting in
the extra time needed to make sure your plan is as concise as possible
will make it easier for your users to understand and follow the rules.
As you create your governance plan, think about how
you might create companion material to go with the plan—a “cheat sheet”
of your most important guiding principles, a laminated card or magnet
with your vision statement, individual brief job descriptions for each
core role, a records retention “ad campaign,” or supplements to the
governance plan (shorter letters) that will help users remember and
internalize this important content.
3.1 Vision Statement
A vision statement describes, at a high level, what
you want to achieve with SharePoint, essentially describing how the
solution delivers value to the enterprise and to each individual
employee. A clear vision statement provides critical guidance to the
inevitable decision trade-offs you will need to make in thinking about
your governance plan. The vision statement is typically written when
the project to create the solution is initiated and may be refined as
the project matures.
Here are two examples of vision statements:
“The portal enables the creation,
management, and sharing of document assets in a business-driven
environment for collaboration, classification, and access across all of
the company. Through its workflow capabilities and application
development foundation, it will support the organization’s information
management needs and provide a business process framework for all
business units.”
“SharePoint provides a
holistic view of organizational assets that simplifies employee
interaction with our enterprise business systems and helps improve
collaboration within the company and with our suppliers, partners, and
customers, thus improving employee productivity and employee and
customer satisfaction.”
Once you have set forth your vision statement, the
next step is to gather your core project team together to think about
the principles that will guide the creation of your governance plan.
3.2 Roles and Responsibilities
Roles
and responsibilities describe how each employee as an individual or as
a member of a particular role or group is responsible for ensuring
success of the solution. Documenting roles and responsibilities is a
critical aspect of the governance plan, which defines who has authority
to mediate conflicting requirements and make overall branding and
policy decisions. Some of the policy decisions that will frame your
governance plan and form the basis of the specifics of your roles and
responsibilities definition include deciding the following:
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
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?
How
much responsibility for page/site design will you delegate to page
owners? Can users modify Web Parts (Web-based data and UI components)
on pages that they “own” in team sites? Can they modify Web Parts on
pages that are part of the corporate intranet publishing solution?
Will some Web Parts be “fixed” on the page, or will page owners be allowed to customize all of the content on their pages?
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? (Content Types and Site Columns
allow you to specify elements in your taxonomy.
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?
There are several key roles to consider. In smaller organizations, many roles may be fulfilled by a single individual. Table 1 and Table 2
present lists of typical roles and responsibilities in successful
solutions. You will likely need to adapt both the responsibilities and
even the terms you use to describe each role for your organization, but
these lists give you a good place to start.
Table 1. Overall Roles for the Solution
| Role | Key Responsibilities |
|---|
| Executive Sponsor | Serves
as the executive level “champion” for the solution. The primary
responsibility of the Executive Sponsor is strategic, positioning the
solution as a critical mechanism for achieving business value and
helping to communicate the value of the solution to the management
levels of the organization. |
| Governance Board/Steering Committee | Serves
as a governance body with ultimate responsibility for meeting the goals
of the solution. This Board is typically comprised of representatives
of each of the major businesses represented in the solution, including
corporate communications, HR, and IT. |
| Business Owner | Manages
the overall design and functionality integrity of the solution from a
business perspective. The Business Owner does not have to be an IT
expert but his job function typically includes responsibility for
internal communications. |
| Solution Administrator (Technology) | Manages
the overall design and functionality integrity of the solution from a
technology perspective. Works in partnership with the Business Owner. |
| Technology Support Team | Ensures
the technical integrity of the solution. Makes regular backups of the
solution and its content. Also usually sets up and maintains the
security model, at least the components in the Active Directory.
Develops new Web Parts and provides support to Site Sponsors/Owners
seeking enhancements to their pages or new uses of the solution. |
| Metadata Steering Committee/Content Steward | While
some large organizations may already have an individual or group
serving in this role, SharePoint 2010’s enterprise content capabilities
require an overall metadata management plan and an individual or team
responsible for maintaining the “metadata dictionary” over the life of
the solution. |
| SharePoint “Coach” or Center of Excellence | Provides
coaching and design consulting to new users who have Full Control
design privileges to ensure that best practices are followed and that
the appropriate SharePoint features are applied in individual sites or
Site Collections. In many organizations, a particular SharePoint
feature becomes the defacto solution for any business problem—a “hammer
in search of a nail.” For example, you don’t want to see users creating
wiki sites when what they really need is a custom list. If you will be
delegating site design capabilities to users who have limited solution
design experience (which pretty much means every organization), having
experienced site design “coaches” available to help users get started
can ensure that you end up with a solution that actually gets used. One
successful organization implemented “drop-in” office hours where new
site owners could come and spend an hour or two with an experienced
solution architect to ensure that they got appropriate guidance (in
addition to formal training). Several others have established in-house
consulting services to help new site owners get started. In many cases,
the first hour or two of consulting is “free,” and services beyond that
require a charge code. |
| “Power Users” Community of Practice | Supports
the successful deployment of SharePoint in the organization by sharing
best practices and lessons learned in a Community of Practice team
site. Members serve as SharePoint advocates and change agents. |
Table 2. Roles for Each Site or Site Collection
| Role | Key Responsibilities |
|---|
| Site Sponsor/Owner | Serves
as the centralized, primary role for ensuring that content for a
particular page/site is properly collected, reviewed, published, and
maintained over time. The Site Sponsor is an expert in the content that
is showcased on the site or page and will likely need to learn about
SharePoint, but his or her primary expertise is business-focused. The
Site Sponsor/Owner may designate a Site Steward/Contact who will
provide the primary day-to-day interface between their business and the
users of the page or site. |
| Site Steward/Contact | Manages
the site day-to-day by executing the functions required to ensure that
the content on the site or page is accurate and relevant, including
records retention codes. Monitors site security to ensure that the
security model for the site matches the goals of the Business Owner and
Site Sponsor/Owner and support Users of the site by serving as the
primary identified contact point for the site. Acts as the Content
Steward for the sites for which they are responsible. |
| Site Designer | In
an environment where site design is delegated to business users, the
Site Designer creates and maintains the site (or Site Collection)
design. Follows design best practices and guiding principles to ensure
that even sites with limited access are optimized for end-user value.
Defines and executes the security plan for the site. |
| Users | Uses
the solution to access and share information. Users may have different
access permissions in different areas of the solution, sometimes acting
as a Contributor (content producer) and other times acting as a Visitor
(content consumer). |
