Author: Michael Sampson

One of the things I rail against in my book SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, is the belief that governance is just about optimizing technical settings in SharePoint. It’s not! It’s about so much more than that, and while the optimization of technical settings — the number of site collections, database sizes, page load times, and so on — is important within a particular context, successfully leveraging the technology of SharePoint to enhance business operations requires a more expansive view of governance.

To that end, Chapter 4 of my book talks through a governance structure (three groups), a decision process (aimed in large part at getting multiple people to start talking and thinking about how to effectively use SharePoint for collaboration), and a set of key governance themes when using SharePoint for collaboration. Those themes are:

• Site Creation Rights
• Template Standardization
• Site Collections
• Site Closure approach
• Third-Party Product Usage
• … and more.

While the aim of the book was to “teach people to fish”, many of the attendees at my SharePoint Collaboration and Governance masterclasses want more specific details about each of the above themes. As in, “give me some fish” … and then we’ll decide whether we want to fish ourselves or use the fish you’ve given.

Well, it’s fish time! The very first “fish” is ready to eat … it’s a new report that looks in much more detail at the Site Creation Rights governance theme. My initial thought was that the report would be about 10 pages long, but it took 26 pages to get it right! And it includes a heap of survey data about current practice by other organizations, thus giving insight into how other organizations are tackling this theme. Here’s the opening paragraph from the Executive Summary:

“What you decide about who is permitted to create a new site in SharePoint, under what conditions, with what approval process, and through what method, has a huge bearing on the effectiveness of your use of SharePoint for collaboration. Get it right, and people will have a clear picture of what is required when creating a new site, thus setting the framework for effective use. Get it wrong, and your SharePoint implementation will result in site sprawl, unused team sites, and poor findability.“

Key findings in the report include:

• There are three stages in the creation of a new site: the request, the approval, and the actioning of the request.
• Most organizations take an approach to Site Creation Rights whereby anyone can request a new collaboration site, but it has to be approved or actioned by someone else.
• Most organizations require an approval for a new SharePoint site, and most organizations look to the person responsible for SharePoint to do so.
• Most organizations take a manual approach to actually creating the new site, such as by an IT administrator using “Site Actions” to create a new site.
• Few organizations have a fully automated approach using workflow tools to create new SharePoint sites.

If this report could help your governance team in their work, please check out the free Summary document, or order the Group License of the report.

Learn more:

• Site Creation Rights governance theme.
• SharePoint Roadmap Governance Themes workbook.
• SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration book.

Author: Michael Sampson

Michael Sampson is a Collaboration Strategist. He helps end-user organizations in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Europe and other places around the world improve the performance of distributed teams. Michael is the author of Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways (Microsoft Press, 2009), and SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration: Using SharePoint to Enhance Business Collaboration (2009). Based in New Zealand, Michael works with clients worldwide.