SharePoint and Web Governance: A Fit Pair

I have been thinking about Web governance and SharePoint this past week. For the first time in my career, I saw a well-managed SharePoint implementation with ample (read several hundred), well-structured sites. The implementation was easy to maintain I heard, all sites had consistent and good navigation (gauged by usability studies), and the naming convention was phenomenal as well.  

For years now I have seen and heard clients indicating their SharePoint sites are out of control. The worst offender I have seen is a client with over 500 SharePoint sites. Each one contained a small population of documents, all were hard to navigate, and the majority were password protected with access granted to a lucky few employees who could plead association with the division sponsoring the site. Doesn’t sound scary yet? I didn’t mention the client is a major player in the financial sector and subject to SOX regulations.

The reality is that scenes like these are common, and not necessarily specific to SharePoint. However, technology toolsets like SharePoint can enable the worst content publishing behavior on sites, most commonly Intranets.

So it was nice to see a SharePoint instance with good Web governance around it. Sure, there could be improvements of this or that kind – but that is always the case. In this instance, there were a number of things done right to make it all work, and none more important than introducing good Web governance to SharePoint. Specifically:

• Defining the ultimate goal of the SharePoint implementation and how it will support the corporate objective of internally sharing information and leveraging best practices of workplace collaboration.
• Deciding who gets to make decisions about the SharePoint sites and whether they get controlled. In this instance, IT holds the key to the implementation of a site based on a written request and applies one of a series of templates based on requirements.
• Creating policies and standards by a hybrid (technical-functional) team that defines navigation, naming conventions, and ROT (redundant, outdated, trivial) categories.
• Ensuring compliance to the policies and standards through a top-down approach with management. While IT owns the infrastructure for SharePoint and its sites, the department only makes visible the status and compliance with the adopted policies and standards.

Not that I should be surprised, but it is nice to see theory executed, and despite all odds (it seems), have a Web governance approach well executed. Especially in the land of SharePoint.

* Writer's note: WelchmanPierpoint is a vendor neutral company specializing in Web Operations Management. While we may advise a client on a technology selection process, we do not endorse any specific product.