The Art of SharePoint Success: Governance - What It is & What It Isn't #spc11

By Symon Garfield (@symon_garfield) Oct 5, 2011

This month I am writing from the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Anaheim where governance is a recurring theme. I’ve only been to a few sessions so far (I am writing on day 1 of the conference), but governance has been mentioned in every session I’ve been to so far. In the keynote, Jeff Teper claimed, “Governance is not an issue… we have lots of customers doing it on a large scale.” Good, so that’s all sorted then!

This is the third in a series of articles discussing my Art of SharePoint Success framework which consists of four key elements: Governance, Strategy, Architecture and Transition. The first article gave a quick start guide to the framework, quickly covering all four elements, and last month we took a look at the reasons why some SharePoint projects fail. Over the next two months we are going to take a look at the most overused (yet still misunderstood) topic in SharePoint: Governance. We are going to start with the basics — what it is and what it isn’t.

SharePoint Governance: What It is

In a nutshell, SharePoint governance:

Aligns the use of SharePoint technologies with enterprise objectives and strategy
Defines accountability and responsibility for SharePoint success
Specifies the measures by which success will be measured

The best way to understand SharePoint governance is to look at it in the wider context of enterprise and IT governance. Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between the three disciplines.

Figure 1: SharePoint, IT & Enterprise Governance

Enterprise governance consists of the processes, customs, policies, responsibilities and organizational structures which affect the way an enterprise is directed, administered or controlled. It includes the relationships between the stakeholders, the goals of the organization, and most importantly it ensures accountability.

IT governance is a subset of enterprise governance. It is:

…The leadership and organisational structures and processes that ensure that the organisation’s I.T. sustains and extends the organisation’s strategies and objectives. (Wikipedia 2010)

In modern organizations, IT is of huge strategic importance, either as one of the largest cost centers, or arguably as an enabler of competitive advantage. It is widely recognized that IT governance should be an integral part of enterprise governance, and should be the responsibility of the board and executive management rather than the chief information officer or other IT managers.

The relationship between enterprise and IT governance is illustrated by translating common enterprise governance questions into specific IT governance questions (Oudi 2010).

Table 1: The relationship between Enterprise & IT Governance

Corporate Governance Questions	IT Governance Questions
How do the suppliers of finance get managers to return some profit to them?	How do the board and executive management get their CIO and IT organization to return some business value to them?
How do the suppliers of finance make sure that managers do not steal the capital they supply or invest it in bad projects?	How do the board and executive management make sure that the CIO and their IT organizations do not steal the capital they supply or invest it in bad projects?
How do the suppliers of finance control managers?	How do the board and the executive management control the CIO and the IT organization?

Enterprise governance should drive and set IT governance. IT in its turn can influence strategic opportunities as outlined by the enterprise and can provide critical input into strategic plans. In this way, IT governance enables the enterprise to take full advantage of its information and can be seen as a driver for corporate governance.