Building a viable governance strategy is the key to a successful SharePoint journey

The problem

Have you heard the following, and how many of them?

"We launched SharePoint, it grew like an out-of-control wildfire, and now, we need to put that fire out." 

This is not something new, this was the case when they invented the product at Microsoft Campus. It has been noticed that, SharePoint governance was an afterthought. SharePoint governance is the "solution" for the problem that is already out-of-hand.

When we evolve from a trial/ proof-of-concept document management and records management platform, into a full-blown enterprise content management system along with various multi-dimensional social tools the traditional top-down SharePoint governess will continue to fail.

Figure 1: The traditional top-down SharePoint governance model. In an era where social content and collaboration is continually important, this approach is no longer as effective. Source: Microsoft

Key to success

Giving a serious attention for implementing governance even before launching your portal solution will save lot of money and energy in the long run. Following are some guidelines for deriving a proper governance plan:

·         Get ready for the change – governance is never complete. Continue to evaluate and improve your governance plan.

·         Setup measurable milestones – define a quality/ quantity gate for each policy and procedure in your governance plan.

·         Setup a governance committee – the voice of the SharePoint governance plan. Include both IT and business representatives.

·         Automate – after creating your SharePoint governance strategy, make sure to automate it  

Figure 2: Effective SharePoint governance requires governance committees find a balance between different types of SharePoint content, including social content, in order to manage it more efficiently. Source: Redmond Magazine

Automating SharePoint governance

Automating your SharePoint governance will help you to identify issues beforehand and save a lot of money and energy. Following are some of the 1st class tools which can be used to automate your SharePoint governance:  

·         DocAve 6.0 from AvePoint Inc.

·         ChangeAuditor for SharePoint from Dell Software

·         ControlPoint from Metalogix Software Corp.

·         Sharegate Governance from Sharegate

How can we help you?

Deriving at a proper SharePoint governance plan requires a lot experience on deploying and supporting portals with SharePoint platform. Having only SharePoint technical skills will only you few steps ahead in the long journey.

Combination of both technical skills and lessons learnt – both good and bad are the best ingredients for deriving at a good SharePoint governance plan.

We at Ceymplon, have the best people and processes to help you to derive at the best SharePoint governance plan suitable for your organization. 

So what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us today!
Visit us at: https://www.ceymplon.lk/service/it-service/tech-consultancy