While Sharepoint is a powerful platform for document sharing, collaboration on projects and
work process automation; if you don’t manage Sharepoint carefully throughout its useful life,
there can be problems. Sharepoint governance sets up policies and regular reviews that protect
the data and hardware of the system, set quality standards for custom software and makes
sure that web portal content delivers value to the business. Governance is enacted by a broad
set of procedures. These procedures, training and auditing make sure that users, developers
and administrators will use and manage Sharepoint with best practices whenever they create
content, data or new software in the Sharepoint network.
A Sharepoint portal website can be setup by a user in 5 minutes without requiring the new
website to follow any business guidelines or content guidelines. Here are some of the problems
that can develop without proper Sharepoint governance:
- Without a content policy to manage Sharepoint, users can create hundreds of personal
web pages with no business purpose.
- Unguided users can also create business and project web pages with duplicate content,
create content that violates confidentiality, create content that gives a bad impression
to the public or even create materials that can’t be backed up and searched.
- Document libraries are created by default and are easy to populate. If not tagged
correctly, document search and manageability can become problems.
Governance, standard procedures and training prevent these problems and increase the
business value of your Sharepoint network. Using best practices to manage Sharepoint will
ultimately pay off in reduced risk, reduced costs and increased efficiency.
Best Practices Help You Avoid Mistakes in Sharepoint Governance
Beyond content guidelines, Sharepoint provides several areas of functionality, which raises
many issues that must be managed for each set of functions. The broad range of Sharepoint
capabilities means that to manage Sharepoint requires a large set of policies and checklists.
What procedures are needed to wisely manage Sharepoint’s Collaboration portals, Document
Management Systems, Content Management Systems, Business Intelligence and business
process automation? Unbounded Solutions consultants have the experience needed to train
your team to manage Sharepoint in all these functional areas. Learning on the job from your
Sharepoint governance mistakes can cost too much in terms of content confusion and data loss.
Sharepoint governance policies work to minimize risks and costs while improving the usefulness
of your Sharepoint deployment. Governance policies with Sharepoint best practices should
start early in your Sharepoint use and should also be used on a regular basis as your Sharepoint
content grows.
A comprehensive governance framework ensures that your portal delivers worthwhile content
to your business users. Your Sharepoint governance plan is required to:
- Avoid organization site, portal site, team site and content sprawl and content
duplication. Sharepoint sites can fulfill corporate business goals when we enact
consistent content policies and a periodic content and site review process.
- Protect the Sharepoint infrastructure and user content through backup and disaster
recovery policy.
- Grow the Sharepoint infrastructure when more features or storage are required.
- Make content searchable and manageable with consistent navigation, taxonomy and
search policies.
- Manage the life cycle of sites and document libraries with information management
policies such as content types with auditing, archiving and expiration.
- Define a deployment process and testing process for both in-house software and vendor
provided software.
- Give users a plan for their web pages, documents, lists, and data that preserves the
organization and ability to search the Sharepoint network.
- Creating the Sharepoint governance policies that will keep Sharepoint in harmony with your
corporate goals can be time consuming because of its wide scope. You will want to include an Unbounded Solutions Sharepoint architect on your site’s planning and design team to ensure
that your site plans incorporate the information architecture needs of your organization.
Call Today for Answers to Your Sharepoint Governance and Management Questions
Given the scope and depth of the policies and procedures needed for governance, relying on
guidance from our experienced consultants can save you both time and money. Do you have
questions on how to protect your Sharepoint deployment with sound Sharepoint governance?
MAXIMIZING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE, ONE UNBOUNDED SOLUTION AT A TIME.
