Governance the #1 Challenge to Managing SharePoint

According to Gartner 66% of SharePoint Customers do not believe they have adequate governance. (Based on a recent Gartner survey) Governance can be defined as a set of defined roles, responsibilities, policies, and procedures that will help your company to proactively manage your information technology resources in a way that maximizes business value.

I spoke with Christian Buckley and he shared that Axceler has been focused on Governance this year in a big way. In their attempt to better understand the problems around governance, they have launched an initiative this year to look at the different challenges to managing SharePoint. One such effort included contributed funding of IDM’s 2012 survey of knowledge and information managers. The results from that survey illustrate that Governance is at the forefront of the major challenges to managing SharePoint.

Gartner predicts that by 2016, more than 20 per cent of CIOs in regulated industries will lose their jobs for failing to implement the discipline of information governance successfully. How does one get a handle on it when we barely understand what it is, and keep expecting that somehow Microsoft is going to address this? Is the answer to fill out a governance plan template? Is it getting a bunch of steering committees involved? What is the best way to address these compliance and regulatory issues?

Governance has been a hot button, and it doesn’t appear to be getting addressed. The more sites that are created and the more content added to a SharePoint environment, the more difficult it can be to change course, correct mistakes and implement a governance model explains Jake Frazier in a recent article on CIOUpdate.com "Prolific SharePoint Sites Undermine Governance."

Debra Logan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner explains "Information governance is the only way to comply with regulations, both current and future, and responsibility for it lies with the CIO and the chief legal officer. When organizations suffer high-profile data losses, especially involving violations of the privacy of citizens or consumers, they suffer serious reputational damage and often incur fines or other sanctions. IT leaders will have to take at least part of the blame for these incidents."

After digging through this, it’s easy to understand why Axceler has initiated a four-phase survey on different facets of governance planning and in their search to investigate best practices to solving these solutions and providing these to the community. See these efforts in each of the four phases below:

• Phase 1 "Understanding SharePoint Governance Perceptions"
• Phase 2 "Understanding SharePoint Roles and Responsibilities"
• Phase 3 "Understanding SharePoint Governance Planning"
• Phase 4 is the final survey focused on governance readiness. This will seek to understand organizational ability to implement those best practices. (Survey to be launched in August)

The overall goal of the initiative is to provide the SharePoint community with better information about what governance is, how peer organizations prioritize it, and best practices for planning and implementing a governance strategy. Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet) of Axceler explains "It is an effort to take a neutral look at the subject, and share the results. Instead of creating one massive survey (the longer the survey, the less likely people are to complete it) we divided our surveys into four areas, and allow participants to complete the survey without registering (without capturing name and email). However, if someone would like to receive the full results, they’ll need to register. The goal is to get everyone to participate so they can get these results."

What an important and great initiative!

Participate in the current survey on governance planning here.

In October, Axceler will be publishing a detailed whitepaper that shares all of the data from these surveys – with analysis and some commentary, as well as input from members of the community.

References:

IDM: 2012 SharePoint Survey showcases governance concerns

CIOUpdate: Prolific SharePoint Sites Undermine Governance

SharePointEurope.com: As SharePoint Use Increases, Governance Decreases by Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism, Axceler

 

This Article is sponsored by Axceler