Building a Strategic Vision and Governance Plan for SharePoint
We typically begin the governance sessions with an overview of governance to ensure consistent expectations and understanding among team members before moving into specifics. Once the governance overview is completed and team members understand their roles, we move into governance planning. First, we discuss business strategy in order to develop a clear picture of current and future business goals. With a solid understanding of the short- and long-term business goals, we can move forward to a discussion of technology considerations for a sound governance plan. Development, operational and user support requirements are also considered.
Governance Overview
The primary objective of the governance overview is to establish or solidify a governing body for the management and use of your SharePoint environment(s). Additional objectives are to:
- Identify appropriate business owners willing and able to provide strategic insight and direction for the portal and bring strategic initiatives to their respective organizations.
- Identify appropriate infrastructure (IT) resources to provide operational support for the system.
- Communicate the need for business leaders to provide technical support to the system in the form of technically talented employees both willing and able to customize, personalize, and use SharePoint in a manner that drives the business opportunities as identified by the business strategy team.
The following governance teams and their roles, responsibilities and members will be assessed:
- SharePoint Business Strategy Team
- SharePoint Technical Strategy Team
- Tactical Operations Team
- Tactical Support Team
- Tactical Development Team
Business Strategy
Once the governance overview is finished and team members understand their roles, specifics of the business vision and strategy are discussed. We feel it is important to understand a business’ vision, objectives, direction and priorities in order for an implementation to be successful.
Together, the SharePoint Business Strategy Team and Allin will discuss questions like:
- How can we improve business processes and how will we deliver on those goals?
- What structures need to be in place to deliver value from this implementation?
- Which areas of the business offer the most opportunity for growth?
- How can we align our activities with the goals of the business?
- What groups are working on similar initiatives and how can we help them?
- How can we reduce inefficiencies and duplication?
The assessment is broken into several areas. For each area, Allin helps facilitate the completion of a comprehensive SharePoint Strategy document. These areas include:
- SharePoint Vision (intranet, extranet, website)
- Vision statement definition(s)
- SharePoint Uses Within the Enterprise
- Current uses
- Possible future uses
- Related business initiatives, systems, applications and services
- SharePoint Objectives
- Objective definitions
- Objective prioritization
- SharePoint Initiatives
- SharePoint initiatives listing
- Ownership, roles and responsibilities for SharePoint initiatives
- Objective mapping (linking initiatives to objectives to ensure adequate alignment)
- Initiative prioritization (based on objective priority and mapping)
- Current Environment Improvements
- Sharing of best practices and implementing effective knowledge management
- Updating SharePoint sites to use consistent features (such as publishing)
- SharePoint initiative management and approach to delivering effective business analysis
Technical Strategy
This part of the governance session is a deep, holistic assessment of specific SharePoint technical considerations within the following categories:
- General Technology Considerations
- Operations Considerations
- Development Considerations
- User Support Considerations
General Technology Considerations
Allin uses this discussion to uncover the general IT landscape and related systems, resources, and constraints within the IT organization. We cover topics including:
- Related business applications and services
- Current areas of integration
- Future areas of integration
- Future areas to be replaced or enhanced
- Technical objectives of SharePoint within the organization
- Prioritization of technical objectives
- Upgraded timelines
- Licensing considerations
Operations Considerations
The goal of the operations discussions is to develop and come to a consensus on a plan for the day-to-day procedures for the management and use of SharePoint and how to process and handle requests from the business.
Topics covered are:
- Objectives/priorities
- Roles and responsibilities
- Configuration and architecture
- SharePoint best practices and methods
- Hardware standards
- Disaster recovery plan
- Deployment process, policies, and scheduling
- Monitoring standards, plans and procedures
- Operational reports
- Maintenance plans
- Service level agreements
- Access and security
- Performance standards and procedures
Development Considerations
Any growing SharePoint implementation will require additional development from time to time. In order for maintenance, support and future upgrades to go smoothly, businesses need consistent methods and best practices.
To help aid smooth growth we discuss:
- Development considerations
- Roles and responsibilities
- Workflow policy
- SharePoint designer policy
- Development standards and naming standards
- Lifecycle considerations
- Source control
- Testing requirements
User Support Considerations
The ability to effectively respond to and resolve user issues is critical to an effective SharePoint implementation. User support discussions are designed to identify how SharePoint support is being managed and executed in your organization, decide what changes should be made and plan an effective strategy for how to accomplish these changes. We discuss:
- Objectives/priorities
- Roles and responsibilities
- Site classification and platform classification
- Site provisioning process/questionnaire
- User expectations agreement
- Support agreement(s)
- Training and communication plans
- Usage monitoring plans
- Security standards
- User adoption predictions and strategies