How can you operate a successful business or system if there is no clear owner? You cannot; it is simply impossible to achieve any long-lasting success without a clearly defined ownership and management structure. Far from being a buzz word or consultant jargon, intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the names, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors (be it content, technology or other).
Imagine a platoon without a lieutenant, your HR department with no head, or your public website without an owner. All might might survive for a few weeks, maybe a year or two, perhaps, but all would die a slow death until someone put it out of its misery.
Politics and the issues of control, ownership and standards go hand-in-hand with intranet management and perhaps these issues more than any other have driven the requirement for defining governance models. Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands to millions of dollars on their intranet – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.
According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (of which 32% have 6,000 employees or more; 11% have 30,000 employees or more). Of the tools and platforms being used by survey participants, a whopping 47% are using SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in some shape or form.
However, SharePoint is not getting the governance it deserves. According to the Global Intranet Trends 2009 report, which highlights detailed intranet findings and lessons from 227 participant organizations, 55% of organizations have implemented or are considering implementing SharePoint; a pitiful 30% of those SharePoint implementers have an intranet strategy. A stunning finding; I would be amazed to learn how the intranet managers or executives in these companies actually got their jobs.
However, if ever there was a platform or tool that required governance, it's SharePoint. “Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail,” says Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting, addressing the annual Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego.
One MOSS expert, who prefers to remain anonymous when citing this particular client, tells of a major bank in the U.K. that upgraded to MOSS in 2007. A little more than a year later the bank had 23,000 instances of MOSS – a a massive problem for the bank. “The way it was deployed and structured was deplorable… but that’s the bank’s fault, not Microsoft’s.”
As I'm fond to continually reiterate, an intranet is one part process, one part people, and one part technology – and the technology is the least important component. An intranet cannot work on software and hardware alone. More specifically, Microsoft provides the software, it is the client's responsibility to build the plan and intranet governance.
When building an intranet a governance model for MOSS, or any other intranet, the major components should include:
Defined ownership structure (names and titles)
Roles and responsibilities (jobs and duties)
Decision making process (who is responsible for what and when)
Content and development policies & standards (the rules of establishing pages, sites and content)
Implementing
proper governance for MOSS (or any intranet) does require some
experience and an outside third-party expert or intranet consultant
is strongly recommended if there is any hint of internal politics or
competing priorities amongst intranet stakeholders. An outside
intranet consultant is considered mandatory if HR, Communications, IT
and all the key departments and business units are not in explicit
agreement as to who should own the intranet and what the model should
look like.
SharePoint may be the World's most popular intranet platform that is loaded with bells and whistles, but without the proper planning and governance, a MOSS intranet project could become your organization's most expensive productivity drain.
RELATED READING:
The Politics of Intranet Ownership
Collaborative Intranet Governance (Intranet Politics Part II)
Why is the intranet so political?
RELATED
READING ON MOSS 2007 (SharePoint):
Advice for SharePoint customers
Sharepoint to be the new Windows?
The pros and cons of SharePoint (MOSS)
SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS)
SharePoint
requires proper architecture & governance
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