SharePoint 2010 introduces new and more advanced social collaboration and community features out of the box. Given this, organizations are spending more time building social communities in the organization as a means to improve collaborative culture, increase knowledge share across the enterprise. This offering was designed with these organizations in mind.
The following is a proposed framework for a Social Strategy consulting engagement. It is intended to help set the context and manage expectations for this engagement but is by no means a comprehensive list (as it will be dependent on the client’s environment, culture and readiness). In many cases, this assessment is adjusted as we work through the engagement in order to match the organization’s needs more effectively.
SharePoint Governance Review
It is important that underlying governance policies, procedures and teams are well-structured, effective and comprehensive. Allin will perform a review of existing governance documentation and plans and will recommend improvements based on its organizational and client experience.
Enterprise Internal Social Collaboration, Networking and Technology-Related Content
The Social Strategy Objectives, Vision and Summary:
This will answer the question: which business objectives will social collaboration and social networking within the organization help achieve?
This will include an executive summary of discovered problem(s) for which we are solving and will explain how the discovered problems are being mitigated or solved through the use of social collaboration and networking implementation.
This will include appropriate reviews and recommendations regarding any relevant third party system or products.
The first component of this engagement will cover the following introductory questions and topics:
What is internal social collaboration?
How does it relate to other models of collaboration?
What are the benefits and risks?
What expectations should the company have about social collaboration?
What kind of information do you want your employees to share and not share?
What is internal social networking and what are its benefits and risks?
What is the importance of Human Process Management in organizations?
How do you govern social collaboration and networking?
What is the difference between most social activities and non-social activities?
What governance model works best?
What is folksonomy?
What is taxonomy?
What are the social components of SharePoint?
How are the social components of SharePoint managed by IT professionals and administrators?
Audience Management Policy and personalization guidance
Security management considerations
Site management considerations
Social Implementation Plan Development
After we have completed the necessary strategic sessions to define goals, objectives and expectations for social collaboration and networking, we will create a Social Success Roadmap or implementation plan that includes:
Concrete and specific schedules, roles and responsibilities
Communication recommendations and appropriate documentation to enable more effective user adoption
In this section, we will work through a Site Classification Pyramid mapped to the existing site map/site structure with solution boundaries covering topics like:
What are your overall SharePoint guiding principles?
Do these align with the social collaboration and networking capabilities you are introducing?
Are additional guiding principles needed?
What does a one-star versus a five-star rating mean in your organization?
Does the organization have Metadata guidance?
What are acceptable and unacceptable tags?
When should a user tag and when shouldn’t they tag?
When should an employee post a status update and what is acceptable?
How should an employee fill out their user profile information and what are usage policies?
Clear instruction on how and when users should work with SharePoint
Blogging Policy
Attribution, copyright, ownership, confidentiality and disclaimer considerations
Commenting Policy
Discussion Board Policy
Wiki Policy
My Site Policy
Personal Profile policies
Help Policy
How employees can get support and training for using or leveraging social features and functionality
How employees can request design and development services to enhance social features and functionality
Infrastructure, monitoring and risks
Development recommendations
Third party product or component recommendations
Social collaboration and networking adoption strategy
Social collaboration and networking success metrics
Auditing and legal compliance policies