Governing SharePoint for Collaboration

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I was supposed to have written a blog post for here a couple of weeks back, but life’s been busy. I had a very enjoyable, albeit exhausting trip to Singapore, leaving New Zealand on the Tuesday and getting back on the Saturday. On the Wednesday evening, I presented to a knowledge management group talking about the linkage between collaboration and KM, with topics that won’t be strange to readers of Messaging News. For example, I talked about the three levels of expertise location, something I wrote about here a long time ago. I also discussed some of my current work around the Four Foundations of Organizational Collaboration (see my blog for more). What struck me the most was the post-event comment: “You have spoken about things tonight that these people have never heard.”

Following Wednesday was Thursday, as is usual, but this Thursday brought with it a full-day workshop based on SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration. My hosts in Singapore had gathered over 50 people to spend a day thinking about using SharePoint for collaboration — from the business, technology and people aspect. Needless to say, I was exhausted after the day. I made some notes early the next morning about what I’d do differently next time, and one of those thoughts was amplified by an attendee in a subsequent email. She wrote saying, “More details, and more trending” information would be useful. The area where this was particularly key related to the governance session.

In Chapter 4 of SharePoint Roadmap I outline a decision process for making governance decisions related to using SharePoint for collaboration. I think it’s the right approach, and I deliberately laid out a process rather than a set of templated answers because it’s critical to get people in a firm to work through a process of governing, rather than having something which they lightly embrace without the thinking and discussing. Anyway, it struck me after the workshop that there is a role for giving templated answers — to a degree. People are really interested in what others are doing in relation to SharePoint governance, and so I decided to kick off a new project. It’s called the SharePoint for Collaboration: Governance Themes Workbook, and it will greatly expand on the ideas in Chapter 4.

Here’s an example. One of the governance themes related to using SharePoint for collaboration is what drives site creation. Who is allowed to create a new team site for collaboration, under what conditions, and with what approval approach, if any. If you are “governing” SharePoint then you will be able to articulate the approach you are taking (eg, “Wild West” … anyone can create a new site, at any time, in any location, for any purpose, with no approval), as well as why you are taking that approach (“because we want SharePoint to be highly responsive to the needs of users”). The Wild West approach is a valid approach, but it comes with some major risks — chaotic site sprawl, redundant and overlapping sites, and more. Again, if you’re governing SharePoint properly, then you’ll be able to articulate the risks, and the mitigations you have put in place.

Back to the Workbook. As I said, I’m writing up each theme — and there are at least 10 — when using SharePoint for collaboration. I’m including much more detail that was in SharePoint Roadmap, as well as survey data into what others are doing. If you are using SharePoint for collaboration today, could you please fill out the Site Creation Rights survey? It would be great to hear about your approach. To learn more about the workbook, check out my resources library.

As I said, much has been going on. Perhaps next time I’ll tell you about the recent Cisco Collaboration Summit, its major announcements, and my analyst report on what they’re up to. But that’s a topic for another day.