Sharepoint Governance (My perspective)

              There are hundreds of forums and blogs discussing about Sharepoint Governance.I would say it is one of the most overused term in the Sharepoint user community.


How is Governance important for Sharepoint???

From my experience working at Sharepoint Infrastructure side, I feel it is the most important factor to maintain a healthy Sharepoint farm.

Anyone can set up a Sharepoint farm and give any level of permission to its users(that is no big deal).But the lifetime of that farm would be very short.I do agree to the fact that setting up the farm is important.But it is more important to build and follow a strong governance model to maintain a healthy Sharepoint farm.Once your governance plan is in place, the next important thing is User Training.(which I would like to discuss at a different time)

A Governance plan should not be a goal, rather it should be a process and should evolve over a period of time.As we move forward , the governance model should  be modified to accomodate its user requirements.We definitely can use a MSDN governance plan as a starting point or for reference,but it is not neccessary to be the perfect one for your farm.We will have to make changes to it to suit our requirements and user perferences.Spending more time in studying the needs and compliances of your organization and coming up with a good governance plan always has its advantages.
Once again having a governance plan or document is no guarantee for a healthy Sharepoint farm.It needs to be strongly enforced and followed religiously.So we will have to make utmost sure the governance plan is aligned with various things like compliance,user preferences..etc. A governance document should not be a end-point document.The core content should always be the same.But we should be open for changes.(the infrastructure limitations should always be kept in mind while making drastic changes).All corporates would have a governance plan already in place for their prtals and websites.We just need to work on it and bring the Sharepoint governance plan in line with it.

The best governance plan would be the one which can accomodate changes to suit the user needs and which will survive these changes.

In a nutshell,the governance plan is -

how the system is setup,                                                     

how it needs to be maintained and

how the organization adheres to the system.

Once again , let me stress on this point.

A governance plan is not a goal, it should be an evolving process.....



Before you step into planning a Governance plan for your organization,you can use the below for your reference.
Governance overview (SharePoint Server 2010) : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263356.aspx
Governance in SharePoint Server 2010 : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800826.aspx