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SharePoint is the fastest growing

product in Microsoft history for a

reason. Organizations have

recognized the platform's

unmatched ability to serve as a

centralized document repository,

online collaboration workspace,

intranet, extranet, and portal service.

As adoption of SharePoint continues

to accelerate globally spreading into

every industry vertical and market,

growing numbers of organizations

are confronting the formidable

challenge of governing and

monitoring the platform's

infrastructure, activity and growth.

To optimize platform performance

and mitigate exposure to legal and

compliance related risk,

organizations must develop a

comprehensive understanding of

their SharePoint's deployment-

including architecture, end user

behavior, patterns, and

administrative capabilities and

limitations. Only with this

understanding can administrators

and other stakeholders develop

strategies to ensure proper

stewardship of this mission critical

asset. To begin developing this

understanding, it is very useful to

first discuss the important concepts

of SharePoint Governance- Principles

and Policies.

Principles are the values on which

the organization is standing. They

are the core of the organization and

this does not change based on

context. Policies on the other hand

are the set of governing rules which

make sure that every act performed

is mapped back to the principles of

the organization.

Policies can always have exceptions.

For example, the organization has a

principle of openness; they might

decide upon a policy that every

piece of content in SharePoint will

be accessible and searchable to

everybody in the organization.

In a nutshell, organization principles

are backbones of the organizational

policies.

Abstract In the last few years, the adoption of SharePoint has caught everybody (even Microsoft) by surprise.

Everybody seems to be investing into SharePoint and SharePoint has become the platform for the collaboration in

the industry especially in mid to large sized organizations. Enterprises are using SharePoint in some form or the other.

When we trace back the roots of the popularity of this platform, it takes me back to the basic need of a human being

which is being able to communicate easily with the people we live or work with. In the enterprises today, the need for

people to collaborate or communicate is reaching its pinnacle because of the current economic conditions around

the world. Let’s think about it, people in the ancient era formed small societies or communities to live together so

that they can safely utilize the skills that they possess as a group which is not possessed by any single individual.

These needs become more and more important when you are surrounded by adverse conditions. Sounds familiar?

This white paper discusses governance in above context. This big community (which is made up of smaller

communities) constitutes an organization.

SharePoint Governance - An inside out perspective

POLICY

POLICIES PRINCIPLES

GOVERNANCE

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Governance is all about setting up

a set of policies for effective

communication to happen in this

big community and making sure

that this communication can

happen on a continued basis and

uninterrupted.

To understand governance better,

let’s dive into the three axes of

governance.

Three Axes of Governance:

Governance can be defined across

three axes:

1. Organizational Governance

2. Informational Governance

3. Operational Governance

Organizational Governance is all

about defining the people who will

be responsible for defining the

informational governance and

operational governance.

a) Custodians of the Principles:

This is what is known as steering

committee in most of the

organizations. These are the

people who are up in the ladder

and are really the ones who will

provide inputs on the

organizational principles to come

up with the policies which can be

implemented at the root level.

b) Representatives of the self-

contained smaller communities:

If the organization is big and it has

some smaller self-sufficient teams,

consider creating this team

constituting representatives of

these teams. You need somebody

to steer this as you can already

sense some conflicting thoughts.

This team will become the

sounding board of the policies to

make sure that these smaller

groups are happy to conform to

the policies. This may or may not

be required based on the size of

the organization.

c) Strategy team: This team

should end up taking inputs from

the above two teams and convert

that into a set of ground level

policies.

Informational Governance will

be defined by the strategy team.

This team will make sure that

policies are implemented in such a

way that information though

controlled at the higher level is

allowed to flow easily between the

defined boundaries. The more

complex the information flow is,

the more difficult it will be for the

people to adopt it. Key things to

be defined here are

a) Information boundaries: This

will help the technical guys define

their SharePoint farms, taxonomy,

information architecture and lot of

other good stuff around

permissions. Most often than not,

it is considered to be a purely

technical task but it really is

informational governance that

then needs to be backed by the

technical details. SharePoint is

really flexible in mapping it back

once its defined property.

b) Life cycle of the information:

This should also be an

organizational discussion and

further needs to be backed up by

technical components around data

retention policies, record

management and archival etc. The

key point that usually is left

undetermined in the incubation of

the idea. This has to be highly

unrestrictive, personal space.

c) Information translation: This

should map back to technical

policies around the web services,

SOA and rest based data access.

This also provides direction to the

technical team on covering the

development policies.

Operational Governance ensures

that these policies are used, new

people are on boarded with these

policies or are made aware of

them (this is most often forgotten)

and ensuring that the services are

provided uninterrupted.

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I often term these policies as the

environmental support to the

communication. Backup, recovery,

availability, performance and all

the policies around that are

covered here. The operational

policies can really be divided into

two blocks

a) Ensuring the environment: The

policies around ensuring that the

environment is available and

accessible for people to use are

covered here. Also the policies

around how would somebody ask

for the site; ask for permission etc.

should be covered here.

b) Planning for the worst: What

happens in case of something

goes wrong. What should be the

plan or communication?

How should governance be

implemented?

An effective governance plan

anticipates the needs and goals of

your organization's business

divisions and IT teams. Every

enterprise is unique, you must

determine the best way to

implement a governance plan that

is custom tailored to your

environment.

Here is a road map that outlines

the stages of a governance

implementation for your

organization:

Initial Principles and Goals:

The governance committee should

develop a governance vision,

policies, and standards that can be

measured to track compliance and

to quantify the benefit to the

enterprise. For example, the plan

should identify service delivery

requirements for both technical

and business aspects of the

SharePoint Server 2010

deployment.

Business information/content:

Organize your information

according to an existing

taxonomy, or create a custom

taxonomy that includes all content

required to support your business

solution. After your information is

organized, design an information

architecture to manage your

enterprise content. Then,

determine the most appropriate IT

services to support the

information architecture.

Educate:

The human element is, after the

governance plan itself, the most

important ingredient in the

success or failure of a SharePoint

Server 2010 deployment. A

comprehensive training plan

should show how to use

SharePoint Server 2010 according

to the standards and practices that

you are implementing and explain

why those standards and practices

are important. The plan should

cover the kinds of training

required for specific user groups

and describe appropriate training

tools. For example, your IT

department might maintain a

frequently asked questions (FAQ)

page about its SharePoint Server

2010 service offerings, or your

business division might provide

online training that shows how to

set up and use a new document

management process.

Plan, plan, plan:

Successful governance is an

iterative process. The governance

committee should meet regularly

to consider incorporating new

requirements in the governance

plan, reevaluate and adjust

governance principles, or resolve

conflicts among business divisions

for IT resources. The committee

should provide regular reports to

its executive sponsors to promote

accountability and to help enforce

compliance across the enterprise.

Consider that, although this

process seems complicated, its

goals are to increase the return on

your investment in SharePoint

Server 2010, take full advantage of

the usefulness of your SharePoint

Server 2010 solution, and improve

the productivity of your enterprise.

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The Solution:

We defined and implemented a robust Governance Framework for

SharePoint 2010 which included:

• Governance Policies (Site structure, Quotas, Workflows, Branding,

Information Architecture etc.)

• Development Policies (Design, Versioning, deployment, Hotfixes, 3rd

Party add-ons etc.)

• Operational Policies (Security policies, Disaster recovery, Monitoring

etc.)

Our framework definition was supported with continuous user awareness

sessions to facilitate easier user adoption. Finally, we conducted large

scale expo style events for users to experience the power of collaboration.

Business Benefits

With the successful implementation of SharePoint Governance, the

governance team at The Co-operative group was able to act proactively

and provide a controlled and managed environment to satisfy the

business needs of collaboration.

Higher ROI: The increased level of user adoption, time saved in buyer-

seller negotiations, better utilization of resources and reduced

transactional costs led to a marked increase in ROI.

Faster time-to-market: The collaboration tool ensured spending less time

on business processes like tracking price changes, negotiations,

promotions, reporting and efficient contract management.

Data Security: By enforcing a defined security model, business users were

assured of data protection.

Increased platform performance: Improved document storage, better

relationships between suppliers and buyers, predictable growth of server

farms ensured an increase in platform performance.

The Client Story/ Problem

Statement:

The co-operative group has 13

different business and thus a

very diversified user base.

There is a high potential for the

employs to collaborate within

and across business units to

provide a better customer

services to this user base.

The need to share the data and

the knowledge across this

customer base is a key to grow

the business and provide a

seamless experience to the

internal and external customers

across these businesses.

Solution Overview:

Aditi rolled out an enterprise

wide governance framework

and ensured end users are on

board through department

level training and adoption

workshops

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About Aditi

Aditi helps product companies, web businesses and enterprises leverage the power of cloud, e-social and mobile, to drive competitive advantage. We are one of the top 3 Platform-as-a-Service solution providers globally and one of the top 5 Microsoft technology partners in US. We are passionate about emerging technologies and are focused on custom development. We provide innovation solutions in 4 domains: Digital Marketing solutions that enable online businesses increase customer acquisition Cloud Solutions that help companies build for traffic and computation surge Enterprise Social that enables enterprises enhance collaboration and productivity Product Engineering services that help ISVs accelerate time-to-market

www.aditi.com https://www.facebook.com/AditiTechnologies http://www.linkedin.com/company/aditi-technologies http://adititechnologiesblog.blogspot.in/ https://twitter.com/WeAreAditi

Of course, there are many

perspectives from which a

company can manage its

information management. At a

high level, it’s important to know

who your users are across the

world, so the right data is subject

to the right global policies. At a

more granular level, however, it’s

just as important to evaluate the

more basic, operational functions

of how data is managed, where it

is being shared and with whom it

can be shared.

Recent information management

surveys have highlighted the way

information, even sensitive

information, is shared among

employees in and out of the

company’s four walls. To ensure

that all users understand the

implications that taking work

home with them, or leaving

sensitive information on their

smart phone or emailing files to

unauthorized users has on a

company’s governance and

compliance,

It’s important to understand how

employees regard information

and the entitlement issues

attached to accessing data

readily, when they implement

solutions to managing it

effectively. The empowered

employee, while important to

innovation, has come to expect a

certain level of access and

mobility, which may be unrealistic

and risky for many organizations

to maintain.

However, educating users need

not be difficult. Industry experts

have shown examples of

company intranets that feature a

governance tip of the day, which

reminds users about privacy

policies and guidelines for

sharing information; or

anonymous web forms through

which users can submit questions

to legal or HR departments.

As the management of

SharePoint, particularly

governance policies, has become

a top priority for organizations

now relying on SharePoint to

work smarter and gain

competitive advantage, the time

to plan is now. To stay on the

right track so they can effective

and proactively grow alongside

emerging technologies and

regulatory standards, governance

needs to become woven into a

company’s culture as well as its

strategy.

Sahil Sagar is a Technical

Architect at Aditi Technologies He

is a seasoned technology

professional, with expertise in

consulting and technical

architecture. Sahil is primarily

focusing on consulting around the

Microsoft technology stack

(specifically SharePoint and BI) to

provide the maximum return on

the investments for organizations.

He has been a speaker in public

forums during community tech

days and Spark IT.