SharePoint Governance plans and why are they important?
Before we dive into answering this question we have to acknowledge that technology is meant to empower our work force to achieve more with ease and not necessarily an everyday struggle because we are challenged to manage underpowered resources. That said I am sure by now you have had some exposure to “SharePoint Governance Planning” and as often more than not you have faced many challenges prohibiting you from devising a governance plan that guides the growth of your SharePoint implementation hence this governance plan is incomplete of non-existent. While this scenario does not preclude us from installing and operating a SharePoint farm and web applications it could become a problem when our users start to exceed the forecasted farm hardware capacity and present the IT Team with challenges maintaining the info structure. Keep in mind technology is as good as its performing speedy functionality and so as best as can be; try to remain proactive on devising suitable governance plans in their simplest forms.
The first set of questions I ask when I am approached about creating a new SharePoint web application is;
what is the business impact if the data intended to be hosted in SharePoint is unavailable or lost?
Is there a daily operational impact and possible revenue or operational cost loss riding on this data?
Asking these two simple questions opens up a lot to learn from and many more to properly plan for. Having worked with and supported SharePoint for the last 10 years taught me the fact a SharePoint server in itself is the not the most important part of SharePoint but rather the actual user data that drives business and productivity. Putting business productivity at the center of what we do; we cannot neglect devising a sound governance plan that sets expectations and drives a best performance high availably solution. How does a governance plan help your design? At its basic premise it helps determine how much hardware investment is needed to architect a given SharePoint farm and more so it establishes a foundation for which how we will operate said server farm hence allowing us to build enough safety nets in our architecture design.
Do not know where to start? Here is a wealth of resources and information on the subject:
Governance in SharePoint Server 2010
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800826
Stay SharePoint Awesome!!