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.  Core Team (PM's, Business Owners, Administrators) Infrastructure Service/Help Desk Application Administrators Application Developers Business Units (Owners, Contributors, Members) Trainers 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