Governance Key Points

Question

What are the key points for consideration when starting to write a SharePoint governance plan? This is obviously a big topic and a place to start would be very helpful!

Answer 1

The starting point is Microsoft's Governance Center: Governance Resource Center.

Some key points to plan around are:

1. Backups
2. Disaster Recovery (Different than backups, failover, business continuity, etc..)
3. Content ownership and creation plans, like any other website "Content is King" and needs to be maintained.
4. Executive sponsorship - What C-Level is backing SharePoint with support and funding?
5. Maintenance
6. Support

Answer 2

When drafting a governance plan, you want to make sure that you get input from both IT, management, and business stakeholders. They will help to ensure that the needs of the business are considered in the plan.

From a SharePoint administrator perspective, you will want to include things like permission levels, inheritance, and a plan to manage new site creation. You will also want to include a way to revise the governance documentation as needed, what will be required to get an exception to the plans set out, and ways to ensure that the guidelines set out in the governance document are followed.