Guest Author: Brian Hughes
Hugheser’s IT Blog

Sorry for the absence in posting.  Those of you that followed the old blog are probably used to it.  Things have been incredibly nutty around here lately.  But there is something on my mind I wanted to write a quick post about.  Hopefully this will push me to write something a little more in depth in the future.

Having SharePoint governance is more than just a recommendation.  Having governance in place is a necessity.  They say that if your production SharePoint install is your only install, you don’t actually have a production environment.  You only have a test environment.* The same thing goes for governance.  You can’t have a true production environment  without a governance plan. 

If you are an admin for a SharePoint environment without a governance plan, your life becomes incredibly difficult. You have no pull to get anything accomplished.  You may be receiving pressure to move it forward or make changes but without someone with the power to make things happen, they don’t.  You’re at a standstill.  Unless you are willing to be the one stop shop for support, development, administration, end user training, and customization, you need to be able to bring others on board.  You need someone that can force the developers to build a custom solution or can force the Support area to learn the product enough to help with end user needs.

I’m starting to ramble so I’ll cut this short.  If you don’t have executive buy-in or a C-level evangelist, you don’t have a governance plan.  In fact, I would go so far as to say you don’t have a production environment unless you are a very small shop and can handle it all yourself.  I’ll butcher a quote and say “if you build SharePoint, they will come.” They don’t care if you have a governance plan.  They’ll come anyway.  They don’t care if there is an executive evangelist.  They know what it is and they want it. 

Before you put bit to disk, you need a governance plan.  Before you can say you have a governance plan, you need executive backing.  If you ignore it now, it will come back to bite you.  Get it taken care of before you start and your job will be much easier.

Please feel free to include any governance stories you may have in the comments below.  I would love to hear more of your experiences.

* I’ll credit that quote to Andrew Connell but I may be wrong.

Guest Author: Brian Hughes
Hugheser’s IT Blog

Brian Hughes is a systems administrator and has been working in various IT related fields since the mid 90’s.  He has done everything from Sales, to Support, to Server Administration.  Currently he is a member of the team maintaining the Windows messaging infrastructure for a large Midwest university.  Although he is the resident SharePoint guru, he also spends much of his time working with Microsoft Exchange, Active Directory, Listserv, BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and Office Communications Server.  This experience has made him more of a Jack-of-all-trades instead of a master of any one particular piece of software.   It has also given him the unique experience of not only knowing how the software works but an understanding of how it integrates with other products.

His background in user support has instilled a desire to help others solve the technology issues they may experience.  Because of that, you can find him frequenting many different technology based online communities.