6 Adoption Lessons from SharePoint Governance for any solution

6 Adoption Lessons from SharePoint Governance for any solution

I won a copy hot off the presses. It’s signed by Susan Hanley and the other authors!

Consumable: something you internalize. Adoption: adds a new responsibility that tags around after you.  At spTechCon I enjoyed the presentation Creating a Consumable SharePoint Governance Plan by Susan Hanley.   Susan shared a living list of SharePoint governance questions: these are on her landing page at http://susanhanley.com/.  Susan promises frequent updates, so it’s worth it to retrieve the latest version every time.  After the session, I was thinking about her word choice of consumable, rather than adoption.  I like that when you consume something, it becomes part of you!

Susan covered many interesting points, but the following lessons stuck out in my mind.  The descriptions are based on my jotted and then revised notes.  Much of the fine phrasing is Susan’s and I’ve tried to use quotes when the line is definitely her words.

What’s the secret to successful governance: “asking the right questions and making the answers consumable.”

Lesson: Work with Stakeholders

Identify your small correct team – HR, legal, records management. Empower them to make decisions. Have the right conversations.  Find out what roles are already defined.  Engage with HR early because if job descriptions are affected (new responsibility), they’ll be in on it. 

Look at your important roles for governance success. Are these people involved in your small-correct-team of stakeholders?

All these roles carry down into the team site level too. Mention in your project charter what people’s roles are.

“The owner is accountable, but we are all responsible!”

Lesson: Don’t Legislate Everything

Don’t get carried away with extending control. Don’t have rules about trivialities: if you can’t justify it, don’t enforce it.  Keep your governance rules limited in scope and enforceable.

Lesson: Keep your Training Snack-Sized

People don’t want to know something, until they need to know it.

  • Don’t expect people to go find it. With templates, build it right in, if it’s important.
  • Structure your training and site management maturity. Roadmap of step-by-step adoption should be hyperlinked to infochunks. People then can go get what they need to know, when they need to know it.
  • “No Big Documents”. At most, quick guides of at most 2 pages. Deliver information as consumable chunks.
Lesson: Fine-tune the System Capabilities

In order to empower business users, you must set up infrastructure that has ‘no sharp edges’…  Users, especially at first, should not have access to do things that will hurt.

Plan on graduated granting of permissions so that the business owner can do the most valuable things.

Lesson: Trust but Verify

Set up infrastructure to guide people in the right directions, and then leave them to it.  Install roadsigns and stop signs – don’t stand there and direct traffic.

 
These all resonate as great advice, don’t they? What are your favourite adoption tips?  Share some in the comments.

One thought on “6 Adoption Lessons from SharePoint Governance for any solution”

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