SharePoint Governance Best Practices

Content Types for PHI

chrishern — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:07:27 GMT

Can you elaborate further how we can use content types to limit this type of information?

Thanks

SharePoint and Agile story board

Rox — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:40:37 GMT

Hi Guys,

Just wondering if some experts can provide me some information if Agile story boards will actually benefit SharePoint support?

Can you please provide some advantages or disadvantages of utilising Agile Story boards for our sharepoint 2007 environment?

We do intend to upgrade to SharePoint 2010 in the future.

Your inputs are highly appreciated!

Thanks, Rox

Governance in Health Care Organizations

Irene — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:45:49 GMT

There are 18 identifiers (PHI). If doctors, nurses, and staff need to access medical records how are they going to ID the patient if according to the law the person reading the information should not be able to ID the individual? I think this needs to be clarified. I can understand how it applies to case studies, research/testing, and protecting individals in the work place. But how does it effect the end user in the medical office, and how can we implement a functional, and HIPPA suitable SharePoint site.

SharePoint Implementation Stories: What Works, What Doesn't?

Cheri Reynolds — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:13:56 GMT

What's the best way to establish a governance team for SharePoint? And what advice can you give towards avoiding the 'decision by committee' paralysis that so many cross-departmental projects run into? Is it important to define specific roles and responsibilities? Does it help to have an identified 'SharePoint Expert' role, or an Executive leadership sponsor? Should we engage our Project Management Office? Who do we need to get involved?

These are some of the questions my manager asked me when we started the implementation planning for SP 2007 two years ago. I'd like to share some of my thoughts and efforts with this topic and solicit comments from others.

The first thing my company did was get all of our Executive Leadership team in a room and had them hammer out a site structure (taxonomy), lead by our PMO team. This may not have been the ideal first step, but it did accomplish the goal of gaining leadership support and funding. Our second step was to engage our resident 'SharePoint Expert' (me) and ask 'can you build this please'? :) At this point I downloaded the MS governance guideance checklist, did some research on reasons for failed SharePoint implementations, and had a sit down with the director of IT and the director or Marketing to discuss the range of requirements for a successful SharePoint implementation.

The key points I emphasized were:

1. Executive sponsorship (not a problem for us, we already bought the technology and they wanted it to start working)

2. Establishing an IT/Marketing partnership for decision-making and technology/content ownership

3. Requirements analysis and scope definition before jumping into full-scale implementation work

4. Establishing a governance team, a support team and a training and adoption plan for users

We used the MS governance checklist as a topics outline to help us understand what areas we needed to plan for. It helped a lot in getting us started. Another big help was when we defined a specific, phase-oriented plan of approach. First we would do a pilot intranet. Then we would expand that intranet to an extranet. Finally we would build a public site. Our reasonings we based on level of risk by audience. We figured our internal employee audience would be a lot more forgiving of any missteps while we were learning than our customers would. We also outlined what functionality we would include and when, and what we would not (at least in these initial phases). I think our best decision was to officially allocate three 100% resources, one from IT Networking (server admin), one from IT development (an experienced SP implementor and user trainer), and one from Marketing (content management, graphic design and user adoption). This cross-departmental team became our 'SP Admin' team and provided a point of contact and strong identity for the initiative. Our executive leaders and our users were able to know easily who to talk to, and each of us had a sense of pride and ownership over the success of our endeavor. It's been two years and we meet every Friday, as well as countless quick calls or emails when things come up. Our implementation had a nice initial 'splash' and has slowly gained more traction as we continue to roll out new improvements, engage new business teams, and mentor and empower our end users.

What's your SharePoint story?

Book excerpt: SharePoint Development and Governance Using COBIT

sos2 — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 23:41:09 GMT

By normbi

The following quote, from the book SharePoint Deployment and Governance Using COBIT 4.1: A Practical Approach by David Chenault, defines the importance of applying best practices (in this case, a governance framework) when planning your ...

Planning & Designing SharePoint Governance - First Steps

Errin O'Connor — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 15:00:54 GMT

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 The Overall Governance of SharePoint is a critical piece of a SharePoint deployment.

Consider not only SharePoint’s branding and look and feel, but also quotas, file type exclusions, appropriate content policies, My Site management, and site provisioning.
SharePoint Designer must be governed (SharePoint 2010 makes it a lot easier but with those of you who are still on MOSS platforms ensure this is done asap!

This will help you to:

Develop a governance model that includes the roles of the content owners and teams. (Remember that Power Users (Power User Strategy) save the day!

Develop an organizational communication plan.
Create portal standards, including development and security standards.
Set the organization’s operational and content management processes.
Identify end-user support processes and tools.
Plan monitoring and compliance policies and procedures.

Manage user requests (new sites and custom development). Implementing a site provisioning solution is key. I like to call it the "SharePoint Golden Rule"... Ensure that there are not multiple sites being created for the same purpose as multiple documents will be stored on those sites that are similar... We want Sites created for specific purposes to store specific content.
Develop SharePoint branding and look and feel standards (critical)

Thanks,

Errin O'Connor

SharePoint Governance Best Practices

Errin O'Connor — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 06:09:21 GMT

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Best Practices SharePoint Governance breaks down into 2 major areas:

Infrastructure Governance
Information Management Governance

From these two major areas, we prefer to break it down further and create 4 major topic areas so that we can start gathering requirements to properly architect and design tailored organizationally specific SharePoint Governance Policies:

1. Environment and Security Governance

2. Custom Development Governance

3. Content Related Governance

4. Administrative and Training Governance

These then break down even further to subtopics on each on of these 4 major topics such as:

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o Environment and Security Governance

SharePoint Disaster Recovery Governance

Defining SharePoint SLAs

Defining SharePoint Maintenance

SharePoint Security Governance

Site Provisioning Governance

Continued…

o Custom Development Governance

Development of Organizational SharePoint Development Standards

Development of Deployment and Code Promotion Requirements

SharePoint Branding Governance

Third-party Solution or Custom Solution Purchasing Policies

SharePoint Designer 2007/2010 Policies and Procedures

Continued…

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o Content Related Governance

Enterprise Content Management Related Policies

Site Storage Policies (i.e. Quotas, File Upload limits, etc)

My Site Policies

Power User and Content Updating Guidelines

Executive and Legal Content Policies

Document Libraries and List Customization Policies

o Administrative and Training Governance

SharePoint Training Guidelines

SharePoint Communication Plan Guidelines

SharePoint Committee Policies

Enterprise SharePoint Support Model

Executive Dashboard \ SharePoint Reporting Guidelines

Microsoft PerformancePoint 2007/2010

Microsoft Project Server Integration Governance

Continued…

I hope this is helpful and I will continue to post a series of best practices from the "In the Trenches" consulting I have learned over the years at EPC Group and some of the amazing architects that are on my teams.

Thank you,

Errin O'Connor

My Site Governance - Quick Hit List

Errin O'Connor — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 05:58:34 GMT

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- My Site templates and custom site definitions can be created to minimize these risks, but organizations should adhere to the following standards during their My Site rollout:

- All My Site Public View content must contain only work-related material. This includes work-related documents, discussions, pictures, links, calendar events, and related content.

- No My Site Public View content can contain any confidential or private data. If the organization would not allow all users within the company with a domain login to view this information, consider whether it should be on your My Site Public View.

- Content pertaining to human resources or legal is typically considered confidential and should not be listed on My Site Public View.

- Financial data must be reviewed prior to its posting on My Site Public View.

- Content on the private site must not contain personal audio files, inappropriate pictures, or other materials not allowed within the organization.

- All discussions or blogging done within a My Site must follow company policies and must not contain sensitive company material or defamatory comments about any person within the organization.

Here are just a few "food for thought items" to get some future My Site Governance related questions going.

-Errin O'Connor

Recommending SSRS + Excel Services + Sharepoint to Management ???

arthur.y.chan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:36:48 GMT

Dear Colleagues.

We are a small bank and we have an end-to-end potential in the form of MS BIDS2005 + Excel Services + Sharepoint 2007, installed and ready to go.

However I have neither the time nor the experience in showcasing an end-to-end solution by creating a dashboard (preferably with hotlinks) for management.

Can anyone help by recommending some MS (or Gold Partner websites) with webcast for showcasing SSRS+ExcelServices+Sharepoint ?

It is really unnecessary to interpose yet another layer of software between my cubes and Sharepoint.

Kind Regards

Arthur Y Chan