Scaling SharePoint through Governance

SharePoint has become a critical business platform within most
organizations, and yet many companies struggle with making
SharePoint scale to meet their growing end user demands. As
SharePoint grows (more users, more business scenarios addressed,
more solutions deployed), it becomes more complex. Administrators
are looking for best practices, trying to learn from the rest of
the community. More and more organizations are thinking about
governance as a way to help them to get their environments under
control and to help them scale.

Some of these best practices are unique to SharePoint, but most
can be applied to any enterprise application. In our experience as
Microsoft Gold Partners, adherence to five key focus areas will
help companies get their SharePoint environments under control,
allowing them to get the most value out of their SharePoint
investments.

While it is advised that any new SharePoint deployment include a
sound governance strategy, the reality is that most governance
plans happen mid-stream, which can make deployment and adoption
more difficult – but not impossible.  The following focus
areas can be applied for new and belated governance strategies:

  1. Policies and Procedures
    This is what most people think about when it comes to governance
    — the tactical areas of managing SharePoint, such as setting (and
    cleaning up) permissions, creating site and content creation rules,
    organizing site and metadata taxonomy structure and management, and
    managing.
  2. Centralized versus Decentralized
    Most organizations need to manage policies and procedures at
    different levels — at the site, site collection, farm, and
    multi-farm level. An important part of a governance strategy
    involves decisions around accountability, and knowing where these
    policies and procedures are managed
  3. Roles and Responsibilities
    Another important aspect of a strong governance strategy is having
    a clear definition of roles and responsibilities — knowing what is
    expected at each level, and where to escalate. The hard part is
    managing who does what, knowing where their roles are being managed
    (Active Directory or SharePoint groups), and making changes in a
    timely manner
  4. Execution and Iteration
    As with any enterprise application, deployment of SharePoint is an
    iterative process with adjustments made as you learn and as your
    requirements change. Likewise, your governance strategy will change
    as your SharePoint environment changes, impacting the ways in which
    you track, measure, and automate.
  5. Communication Strategy
    A healthy part of any governance model should be a strong
    communication strategy, which will help to get people involved, to
    keep them abreast of what is happening, and to give them data on
    what has happened.

The end result of following these strategies is a stronger, more
scalable SharePoint environment that will better comply with the
growth and changes within your organization. Governance is not
something that should be rushed into without proper planning and
alignment with broader organizational goals and initiatives. Above
all, you must think about the end user impacts of these changes. At
the end of the day, a successful SharePoint deployment is one that
fulfills both the organizational standards and also the end user
expectations.

For more on how Axceler provides support for your governance
initiatives, be sure to stop by our booth at the European
SharePoint Conference in Berlin, and come see us go head-to-head
with the competition in the Administration Tool Shootout! See you
there.

 

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