Appropriate governance plan is the key to effective functioning of a SharePoint based environment in an organization. In a small enterprise, a SharePoint Administrator usually has a routine tasks of creating sites and managing security. But, if the organization is large and growing, there may be multiple users performing the similar tasks. In this case, not each of these users may have all the permissions available. This requires a clear-cut formulation of governance strategies.
The SharePoint Governance plan can be defined as a set of policies that outline the processes, roles, rules and regulations required for the administration, maintenance, and support tasks for user interactions with SharePoint in an organization. Such a plan helps you in minimizing the overlapping of efforts made by different users, as it controls how an organization’s core business teams and IT teams work together to achieve the desired organizational goals.
Needless to say that every organization has its own unique needs and set of goals. These all together influence how to approach the governance plan. Microsoft SharePoint provides for the governance plan that includes three major areas, namely, IT governance, information management, and application management. A little descriptions of these are as follows:
1. IT governance
This is particularly of great significance for the enterprises in service industry. It’s always a tedious task to control the services you offer, e.g. implementing the service level agreements for each service. A suitable IT governance plan is a crucial step in this direction. It ensures that the service meets the business needs of your organization in a secure and cost-effective manner.
2. Information management
Developing a lucid information architecture enables you meet your business needs effectively. It exposits how you will govern the flow of information in your organization. The information are usually contained in documents, lists, websites, and webpages. A coherent plan leads to maximize the information’s usability and manageability. It also sets who can have the access to what type of information. For instance, only higher management users must have key long-term strategic data, whereas lower level managers can have access to short-term tactical data.
3. Application management
Every organization utilizes a number of applications for the effective functioning of its business processes. As these applications, whether developed inside the organization or purchased as a propriety software, always need to be customized as per their usage in the organization. SharePoint includes customizable features and capabilities that can be used to customize many product areas like, Business intelligence, forms, workflow, and also content management.
For an effective governance, all of three are equally important.
Finally, we can summarize that a good governance plan can help you streamline the deployment of SharePoint based products and technologies. By enacting the necessary security provisions, it helps keep the entire organizational system secure and compliant. This way, it founds the basis for the getting you the best of your Microsoft SharePoint technology.
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