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.

1. www.aditi.com
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
POLICIESPRINCIPLES
GOVERNANCE

2. www.aditi.com
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.

3. www.aditi.com
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.

4. www.aditi.com
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

5. www.aditi.com
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
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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.