Sharepoint how to structure team sites and project sites

Question

I was thinking of having a tree structure with every team at the top and then having all projects underneath the teams. Something like this:

sharepoint/team1
sharepoint/team1/project1
sharepoint/team1/project1/sub-project
sharepoint/team1/project2
sharepoint/team2
sharepoint/team2/project1
sharepoint/team2/project2
sharepoint/team3

              Team1                             team2                     team3
     project1    |    project2            project1|project2
sub-project

The problem with this structure is that we are having some few projects that are between several teams. How do you think that I should structure it?

Answer 1

I would have a totally separate 'Projects' tree (possibly even a site collection), and just link to each project as needed (possibly with a 'members' list on the front page of each project to show who is associated with the project). That way, if the project changes teams you won't have to reshuffle the site hierarchy.

Answer 2

You do not need a separate site collection for this. Just create separate Team Sites for each project and create a SharePoint group (will contain members from different teams) and assign it to each "project" site. Now you can create security-trimmed menus out of the box.

Answer 3

It is very common to want both project and team sites. However, the desire doesn't always make sense so it's best to so some due diligence with your audience/s.

Assuming both sets of sites make sense, I second Moo's advice: use a separate "tree" of sites for each. If performance, scale or ease of administration is a concern these can be places in separate site collections (and SQL dbs). However, this is not necessary per se.

Getting the site collection structure "correct" up front is less of a concern now that the STSADM tool is able to split/combine them after the fact. Also, it's sometimes easier to get it "right" once you see how people are using (or not) the sites.

Good luck!