In a CIOUpdate.com article entitled Prolific SharePoint Sites Undermine Governance, technology writer Jake Frazier outlines a common problem with the growing number of SharePoint customers: the uncontrolled growth of SharePoint sites, and how it impacts governance. SharePoint is proliferating in the marketplace, with KMWorld reporting SharePoint licenses at over 130 million worldwide. The more sites that are created and the more content added to your environment, the more difficult it can be to change course, correct mistakes, and implement a governance model. But the business value to having a formal governance model in place is enormous. As Mr. Frazier points out,

"To accomplish the defensible disposal of information, including information in SharePoint sites, companies must put in place and enforce a record retention policy that recognizes the three major reasons to keep information: business value, regulatory requirements and legal holds."

The difficult part of building out any kind governance plan is figuring out where to begin. While the ideal situation is to have a plan in place from the beginning, it's just not realistic. Most organizations adopted SharePoint by trying out the free version (WSS 2.0 or 3.0), only adopting the enterprise version once users had adopted the platform. Suddenly, many IT organizations find themselves trying to clean up, organize, and administer these systems. What they need is help in building out governance in a real-time environment. Mr. Frazier outlines two very important steps in building a plan for taking back control of governance:

Getting executive support. This is essential to any IT project, but especially with SharePoint governance, as you may need to enforce certain policies, using both the carrot and the stick.
Creating a cross-functional taskforce or governance committee. This is where your governance model is debated, designed, and approved by stakeholders across your organization.
What's the role of governance in your migration strategy? Taking the time to clean up your environment first, enforcing your governance strategy within your current (legacy) environment, will reduce the pain of future migrations. How? By forcing you to know what is out there. By helping you to clarify your goals for the platform. By reducing the number of sites to be migrated (through inactivity, lack of use, or unfinished state). By clarifying permissions and accountability. By helping you to understand how your next environment should be architected.

While Mr. Frazier's two recommendations are essential steps to taking back control of your SharePoint governance, they are just the beginning of your migration planning process. Some additional steps might include:

Create a governance strategy. Formalize your plans, so that stakeholders and end users alike can provide input, and help make the resulting plan part of your company culture, ensuring long-term success.
Understand your usage and activity. Start your planning with data, so that you better understand who is using SharePoint, how they are using it, and where there are gaps in your planning. Prioritize your migration around those teams that rely on SharePoint for their day-to-day business processes.
Map out your records management policies. Different departments may have different rules they need to adhere to, and one set of rules may not apply to everyone. Understanding these differences can be essential to the success of your future environment (and end user adoption).
Implement and iterate. Once the plan has been built and signed off by your executive sponsor, stakeholders, and end user influencers, begin to implement - making sure you have a strong change management process in place, so that you can make changes and adjust your strategy as you learn.
Migrations are complex projects, requiring input from all of your key stakeholders - not just your IT team. They are phased, iterative, and error-prone activities, and should be carefully planned and thoughtfully executed.

Meet Christian at the European SharePoint Conference.