There are a number of misconceptions around information
management governance, and, generally speaking, a certain degree of chaos and
lack of leadership surrounding business decisions affecting IT and,
specifically, SharePoint. This chaos often leads to a lack of respect (and
funding) for governance, which is often viewed as a nice-to-have rather than an
essential aspect of any deployment.
The result is that governance is usually not brought up
until an organization is already experiencing pain.
I often refer to the phrase "retroactive
governance" when discussing this topic. In a nutshell, the concept is that
organizations are rarely (if ever) able to plan out and orchestrate their
governance strategy from a clean slate. Instead, governance is something
organizations turn to when they're already waist-deep in problems, and they are
looking for a way out.
What kinds of problems? Site and environment
proliferation, permissions issues, content and storage issues, rogue
customizations, and unauthorized tools and solutions, among others. Add to this
complexity to new(er) problem of differing standards, management capability,
and oversight of hybrid and mobile environments, where the expectation of
executives is that these new infrastructure models will fall under the same
governance, security, and compliance policies and rules as the old
systems…..without an understanding of the many gaps that can come with hybrid
and mobile environments.
Governance generally takes root in the darkest hour,
rather than as a proactive process. It's great to talk about best practices
from a clean slate perspective, but what most companies need is how to shovel
themselves out of where they are today.
As a consultant, I can work with clients to quickly clean
up, re-organize, and audit their SharePoint environments as way of getting
their governance processes back on track. However, I'd rather spend my time
beyond cleanup, working with clients to extend the capabilities of their
collaboration platform -- not patching holes.
Ask yourself: are your governance policies retroactive in
nature, constantly fixing past mistakes? Or are your policies and procedures
proactive and manageable, helping you to get the most out of your
infrastructure investments?