4 Best Practices for Governance Plans in SharePoint

Get to Grips with Sharepoint Governance

From an IT perspective, the term governance refers to the policies – and the roles, responsibilities and processes involved – which organisations use to control how their business divisions and IT teams work together to achieve its business goals.

The larger the organisation, the more detailed the governance plan is likely to be, as its business divisions would have their own set of goals to meet and compliance requirements to adhere to.

Why do You Need a Good IT Governance Plan?

Regardless of the size or the volume of work an organisation has, a good governance plan will help to:

• Streamline the ways collaborative technologies, such as SharePoint, are deployed
• Uphold the security and compliance of the organisation’s IT systems
• Ensure strong return on investment in the IT infrastructure implemented

How to Enable an Effective Governance Plan in SharePoint

The goals and requirements of your business divisions and IT teams should underpin your SharePoint governance plan, especially if the intention is that everyone within your organisation uses it

Providing access to external users however, comes with its own security risk. With ProvisionPoint 365, you can introduce a more tightly governed process to manage requests for the creation of externally facing Teams. This process typically involves additional security questions, where the request is authorised by your information security team. Alternatively, you could simply disable guest access all together.

Here are four recommendations we think can help you tailor a SharePoint governance plan to suit your organisational needs:

1. Define and Communicate your Goals and Principles

Set up a Governance Committee that comprises key stakeholders, line managers, and IT team members to put together the business goals and principles which your organisation are to meet and follow. Discuss how you would all like SharePoint to be deployed from business and technical perspectives.

2. Create, Customise and Update Business Taxonomy

When you have identified and determined how SharePoint is to be deployed, we recommend that your Governance Committee decide how to classify its business content and information. Take this opportunity to reorganise the company’s existing taxonomy, or create and customise a new one, which includes all existing and future business content. Once the taxonomy is defined and agreed, you can design the appropriate information architecture and determine which IT services are to support this architecture.

3. User Training

There’s little point in putting all this effort in, if your users aren’t able to get the most out of the SharePoint deployment. We recommend providing a comprehensive training plan that helps users understand how to best use SharePoint in order to both get work done efficiently while adhering to compliance requirements. This will also drive user adoption.

You could create dedicated SharePoint Sites featuring content addressing frequently asked questions (FAQs) that users may have, as well as reminding them of the security, compliance and other policy requirements that they need to adhere to. Training videos could be uploaded on to SharePoint Site Pages or Directories for users to refer to as and when the need arises.

4. Keep the Governance Going

Effective, successful governance never stops as business goals and requirements continue to develop and change. Once SharePoint has been deployed, your Governance Committee should meet regularly to address:

• any updates that need to happen,
• any new requirements that need to be factored in, and,
• any conflicts that arise between business divisions and IT teams which need resolving.

The Governance Committee should report back to the organisation on the updates to promote accountability and help compliance requirements be enforced.

Are You Looking for a SharePoint Governance Solution?

ProvisionPoint 365 is a workspace governance solution for SharePoint and other Microsoft 365 applications. This powerful SaaS solution helps users, management, and IT administrators bring control, consistency, and calm to Office 365 and ultimately deliver successful governance.

Find out more about ProvisionPoint 365 here.