A recent study commissioned by SharePoint solutions provider Axceler shows that while 65% of respondents say governance is important to their organizations, nearly half say governance policies do not exist or are unidentified. Part of the reason, according to Axceler’s Christian Buckley, director of product evangelism, is that “planning generally takes a back seat to getting SharePoint deployed and functioning, and governance is too often viewed as a planning luxury.”
Perhaps another problem with putting governance in place is scope. Governance is a huge term, and much of what would apply in one part of the organization has no relevance in another part. For instance, how you manage scaling up SharePoint in an organization, or how you manage authentication and authorization, is critical to your IT pros but has no bearing on information workers, who need governance regarding document storage and organization.
Taking on a governance project can be daunting. But if you break it down, say, in terms of IT governance, custom project development and information governance, and bring together the managers who will be tasked to implement and enforce the policies, the chance for success can be much greater.
Axceler’s survey was part 1 of an initiative to help the community better understand the state of SharePoint governance, according to the company. The complete results of part 1 can be viewed here. Also, you can participate in part 2 of the survey here.
— David
