Keys to an effective intranet governance plan in SP 2010

An effective business Governance Plan provides a framework for design standards, information architecture, and your overall measurement plan. It is intended to summarize and tie together, but not replace, the documents that describe these activities in detail. Referencing this related content rather than embedding it in the Governance Plan will keep the plan from becoming unnecessarily bloated and unmanageable. 

In addition, the Governance Plan should reference all of your existing IT policies for topics such as the appropriate use of technology resources, confidentiality of content, and records retention. As you begin to deploy more and more Web 2.0 functionality into your environment, new IT policies will emerge that will impact SharePoint governance. Again, your plan doesn’t need to include these emerging policies, but it should reference them where appropriate. 

The Governance Plan is a business document: Its primary audience is the business (content) owners of your SharePoint sites and the users who produce and consume the content on those sites. Because all users can effectively produce content in SharePoint by using social tags and ratings (if you allow these in your solution), everyone in the organization needs to be familiar with the Governance Plan. 

The formal Governance Plan document includes several critical elements: 

• Vision statement 
• Roles and responsibilities 
• Guiding principles 
• Policies and standards

General Governance Guidelines 

Governance Plan Objective 

• Vision Statement 
• General Guidelines 
• Roles and Responsibilities 
• Guiding Principles 

Detailed Governance Policies and Standards 

Content Management Policies and Standards 

• Posting Content to Existing Pages or Sites 
• Posting Content to the Home Page SharePoint 2010 Governance Planning July 2010 
• Posting Content to Personal Pages 
• Social Tags and Ratings 
• Records Retention 
• Content Auditing and Review 

Design Policies and Standards

• Creating New Subsites 
• Page Layout and Organization 
• Content Types and Metadata 
• Content-Specific Guidelines/Policies 
• Security 
• Branding 

Customization Policies and Standards 

• Browser-based updates 
• Updates based on SharePoint Designer 
• Sandboxed Solutions 
• Centrally-deployed / 3rd Party Solutions

Intranet governance

Organisations are depending on their intranets to deliver information and services which directly impact on performance.  For successful organisations intranets are more than ‘nice to have’ extras with a few bits of news and some policies which might be out of date.

Intranets are becoming critical to employees needing to complete tasks using tools and apps on the intranet.  They need to be easy to find and easy to use.  Employees also want to feel confident the information they use is relevant, up to date, reliable and clearly owned should they need more information.

Employees share information and contact friends and followers using tools on the internet that are very easy and very rich in features and functions.  They expect their organisation’s intranet to offer the same experience.  It will become a factor in new recruit’s deciding whether to join an organisation or whether to stay and become an engaged employee.

How will you be able to to achieve this?
Your intranet doesn’t just need different technology to solve these problems – not even SharePoint 2010.  It is how you implement technology, what your business priorities and strategy are and how you manage the information and tools on your intranet that really make the difference and will bring success.

Intranet should be organised based on some key factors governance, strategy, communications, engagement, collaboration, usability and measuring value.Contact me to find out how I can help you:

• develop a strategy aligned with your organisation’s and align with business head or leader
• find the right approach to successful technology and change projects 
• understand what publishing standards you need and how best to implement them
• advise on compliance with standards and risk management
• measure the full value of an intranet
• design roles and responsibilities within a governance framework

My tailored service to business:

• a few hours help and guidance
• a day’s training/workshop
• a few days advice and detailed guidance
• a few weeks strategic guidance, project planning and if needed, implementation

Find out more about my experience, read the information below and get in touch.