When enterprises first adopt SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007) in their organization, the immediate benefit is not realized right away.

Once they bring in a consultancy like ours who are SharePoint experts to successfully create a line of business application that:

1) Fills a business need

2) Has an obvious return on investment

3) Has been branded according to company style guides

4) Gives the user an amazing user experience

5) Looks fantastic! (as all of our applications do because of our fabulous user experience team)

6) And most importantly, makes the user WANT to use the system

The word starts to spread like hot-fire across the organization and we see other groups/upper management in the organization say:

  • “That is SharePoint???”
  • “I can see endless opportunities on how I can use this now”
  • “Will it also do this?”
  • “Can I get my own developers to do this?”
  • “Can IT set my division up to use the system?”
  • “What else can it do?”
  • “Are there any legal ramifications to using this system?”
  • “What corporate security restrictions should there be on the system?”
  • “I don’t think everyone should have access to do this”
  • “What are the SharePoint licensing restrictions?”
  • “Can I implement my own farm environment?”
  • And most commonly..... “Wow, I want to get this for my group”

Time and time again, I have worked with enterprise scale IT groups who are just overwhelmed on what is happening and they don’t know what to do. They are receiving so much pressure from everyone and just don’t have the resources or the time or the knowhow on how to run the system.

I think the first obvious things to do, is to take a step back and go through a true governance assessment for implementing SharePoint across your organization. I usually find that this process takes 3 to 4 weeks to complete (of course by a SharePoint subject matter expert). There is a good blog by Joel Oleson that talks about how to put this type of assessment together [1].

The problem is that many organizations just don’t have time to do this. With the help of a colleague, I have put together a sample set of SharePoint Governance Survey questions which IT can put out to the divisions who are asking to use their system or implement a system on their own. Feel free to make any suggestions or additions.

Note: When I get a little bit more time, I will categorize these questions.

  • What support would you need on an on-going basis?
  • Do you have a SharePoint environment you are testing on?
  • What is the load you expect on the site?
  • Do we need to backup your site?
  • What is the time-zone of the users?
  • Does the site require intranet, extranet or internet access?
  • Are you using Forms Authentication?
  • Who will be training your users?
  • The following information must be provided in order to request a new site:
    • Site Name
    • Site Description
  • Will you need to use services from the SSP?
  • How many hits do you predict?
  • Is the application database intensive?
  • Are there any external applications being served out of SharePoint? (i.e. web parts that connect to other databases)
  • Detailed description about what purpose of the site is (what is the business problem?)
  • How it will be used to meet their business needs
  • What are the primary Site Owner’s details?
    • Full Name
    • Email Address
    • Phone #
    • NTID
  • What are the secondary Site Owner details?
  • What are the User audiences/groups that will use the site?
  • How many users?
  • Who are they? (list NTID’s or describe audience – i.e., all people under VP xxx)
  • Site Owner and Back-up Owner both provide sign-off to acknowledge that they:
    • have already evaluated other existing enterprise WSS/SharePoint platforms for the purpose of solving this specific business problem and have verified that it will not meet the needs of the business
    • understand they are responsible for supporting their own sites and assume full responsibility for it and will provide support to their user base
    • have had some SharePoint training (WSS 3.0 or MOSS 2007)
    • have read and will adhere to the IT’s Sites Recommendations and Guidelines
  • Are you requesting a new site or a new site collection? (default answer should be site unless explanation can be provided)
  • Does your solution include other sub-sites? (if yes, provide remaining info for all sub-sites also)
  • What site template should be used?
  • What are the different roles/groups your solution includes? For each group provide:
    • Name of group
    • Permission level assigned to group
    • Site permissions for this group (include details about what permissions the Site Owners require)
  • What lists (or libraries) does your solution include? For each list provide the following info:
    • Name of list
    • List type (Document Library, Tasks List, Custom List); if Custom List, for each column please specify:
  • Custom columns?
    • Column Name
    • Column Data Type (Single line of text, Choice, Multiple lines of text, etc.)
    • Default value
    • Other pertinent info (like list of items for Choice type)
      • List permissions (which users/groups have permissions to the list)
  • What site (or site collection) features does your solution require to be enabled?
  • What Shared Services does your solution require? (Search, Excel Services, InfoPath Form Services, etc.)
  • If Search is required (see previous question), answer the following:
    • Do you require custom search scopes?
    • Do you require custom managed properties?
    • Do you have any other custom search requirements? (i.e., specific indexing schedule)
  • Does your solution require any other adjustments in the SharePoint Central Administration?
  • Does your solution include the use of any Workflow features? If yes, answer the following:
    • Is it an out-of-the-box workflow? If yes, which one?
    • Is it a custom workflow built with SharePoint Designer?
    • Is it a custom coded Windows Workflow?
  • Will SharePoint Designer be used to construct your solution?
  • Does your solution include any custom code?

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/archive/2006/08/23/key-governance-considerations-in-a-sharepoint-deployment.aspx).

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