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SharePoint Governance Meeting Breakdown

One of the things I have noticed is that if you throw out the word "Governance" you have some people say they don't have it but think it might be useful, and others who just run for d-hills. Its a normal reaction for people to not want restrictions or other people telling them how to use a system. But all in all it's best to have one.

Within this post I would like to break down some of the common elements that you might see in a SharePoint Governance Plan. Hopefully this will make it easier for scheduling meetings and for getting everyone on the same page.

I have broken out the following meetings into 4 sections: In my previous post about governance I stated that these plans are basically 1/2 Roles and Responsibilities and 1/2 Policies and Procedures. Please note that the time dedicated for each one of these meetings are estimations and should not be taken as written in stone.

  • Meeting #1: Overview
  • Meeting #2: People
  • Meeting #3: Support
  • Meeting #4: Policies/Procedures

Meeting #1:  Overview

Date/Time Meeting Topic(s) Proposed Resources
~2 Hours

Overview of Governance Checklist/Base Document
The primary objective of this plan is to establish the creation of a governing body for the usage and management of the SharePoint environments.

Core SharePoint Team
Business Units
App. Administrators

Meeting #2: People

Date/Time Meeting Topic(s) Proposed Resources
~2 Hours

Roles & Responsibilities / Locations
The SharePoint environments will be managed by two types of groups made up of smaller teams: a strategic group and a tactical group.  Regardless of the title, each team has a distinct role with distinct responsibilities. 

  1. Core Team (PM's, Business Owners, Administrators)
  2. Infrastructure
  3. Service/Help Desk
  4. Application Administrators
  5. Application Developers
  6. Business Units (Owners, Contributors, Members)
  7. Trainers
  8. Business Analysis

Core SharePoint Team

~1 Hours

Governance Communication
Communications will include the type of release, schedule, impact, and list of new or changed Web Parts.

Core SharePoint Team
~.5 Hours

Training
Definition on where users get training, and in what format.

Core SharePoint Team
Business Units

~2 Hours

Security / Permissions
Defining policies around who can grant permissions and to what level.

Core SharePoint Team
App. Administrators

Meeting #3: Support

Date/Time Meeting Topic(s) Proposed Resources
~1Hour

Search
Responsibilities for relevancy settings expectation, Define Content Sources to be indexed, Usages of Keywords and Best Bets.

Core SharePoint Team

~1Hour

Release Schedule
Schedules for Bug Fixes, Major Minor Releases. Dev, QA, Production Cycles and who signs off on it.

Core SharePoint Team
App. Administrators
Application Developers

~1Hour

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
Time estimations for site creations, Site Quotas, Escalation procedures, and Resource Availability

Core SharePoint Team
Service/Help Desk

~.5 Hours

Testing
Policies around Who, and what is required for testing. Mechanisms for testing feedback, and references to test plans

Core SharePoint Team
Business Analysis

Meeting #4: Policies/Procedures

Date/Time Meeting Topic(s) Proposed Resources
~1Hour

Site Policies
Defining Policies for some of the following: Templates, Upload sizes, Document Retention's, Document Management, Auditing, and Logs.

Core SharePoint Team
App. Administrators
Business Units

~1Hour

Site Provisioning
Defining what metadata should be captured during the creation of a site, branding, quotas, Charge back models, and naming standards.

Core SharePoint Team

~1Hour

Site Use Confirmation & Deletion
Policies around site monitoring, usage, and retention.

Core SharePoint Team
App. Administrators
Infrastructure

~1Hour

My Sites
List of Features that will be enabled and for which users.

Core SharePoint Team
Business Units

~1Hour

Change Management Process
Definition of change request process, and issue ticketing.

Core SharePoint Team
App. Administrators
Service/Help Desk

~1Hour

Deployment / Customization
Policies around 3rd party webparts, Customization software (Visual Studio, SharePoint designer), Source Code Repositories, and Coding standards.

Core SharePoint Team
App. Administrators
Application Developers

Comments

Anonymous said…
I really like this post. I think it covers most of the planning to setup governance over MOSS sites. One thing I would suggest is that a key element, specially when dealing with extranet sharing, is legal context. Much of the information that is or will be shared on MOSS is governed by some legal agreement (NDAs, MOUs, etc.) that dictates how, when, and why information is being shared. Therefore I believe it is important to include legal or contract types in the meetings regarding both policy and security to make sure that these agreements are respected. We have developed an integrated application that allows these agreements to be at the center of governance. To learn more check out our blog at http://research.epokinc.com/blog/ or visit Epok's website at www.epok.net
Anonymous said…
Oscar is right. Regulatory and other compliance requirements must also be considered in governance of content.

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