SharePoint Governance

Question

I have been search about SharePoint Governance for past few days, the more I search, more confused I am getting about this Topic.

Could anyone just explain in brief? What you know about it or are you using/implementing it?

Answer 1

This is one of those topics that tend to mean something a bit different when you get to the details for different companies, but basically here's my experience with it.

When you talk about governance its about who is responsible for different elements of it, from defining and managing the taxonomy, to the content for different areas. What the process of publication is, for modification is. Who administers different sections, how documents are to be handled/managed/archived/retained, what the auditing policy is. How escalations will be managed, who needs to be notified, who the stakeholders are, etc.

Basically in other words it's about looking at SharePoint as being not just a content storage system but needing to be a coherent enterprise tool with all of the key stakeholders sitting up and taking notice, and recognizing that some things need clear process to avoid either redoing everything in 18 months or being unable to find things.

Some of the most important things that I find ends up getting discussed is security (internal vs. external access, employees vs. contractors vs. external people, logging of who accessed files, etc.), roll back & geographic distribution (for performance), and revocation of rights (when someone is fired, how is their access revocation managed quickly and effectively).

Sorry this is a bit of a shotgun answer, but that's the type of stuff you're looking at. There are actually consultants who have specialized in these areas. It's usually (from what I experience) about 20% technical, 40% change management and 40% process / business.

I hope that helps.