Jimirig

Original Article: http://www.sharepointbriefing.com/spother/article.php/3801261

By Eric Landry
February 6, 2009

This is not an IT story, it’s a business story. Customers often hear only the high-level, feature-centric, compelling version of the SharePoint story: SharePoint does document management; SharePoint does workflow; SharePoint does collaboration, etc. But what do these features really mean from a business perspective, and how can a business prioritize, operationalize…manage them—all while ensuring that SharePoint continues to satisfy strategic business objectives and most importantly, that it’s adopted by your users?

The SharePoint Double Fantasy

SharePoint consultants, engineers, and developers tend to believe that end users will:

1. Love SharePoint. We love SharePoint! We believe our users will, too. We believe people will naturally use the system as originally conceived, designed and delivered. After all, why wouldn’t business users flock to use a centralized portal? Why wouldn’t they want to use online workflow approvals? Why would people still send documents as email attachments when they have SharePoint?
2. See the light. We dream that—given the opportunity—end users will adapt and change to become good “SharePointers.” In other words, rather than following their pre-SharePoint procedures, they’ll quickly learn to open a browser, do a document search, open the found document, update it, send it for approval… all centralized, and all through the browser!

Reality Check

Figure 1

But the double fantasy isn’t how most people think or behave, much less work. That’s not a slam against users; by nature, humans are creatures of habit. With the rush of daily business demands, old habits prevail. The first reality check when deploying SharePoint is to accept that fact. Deploying SharePoint without a structured SharePoint governance model will eventually lead to a return of the old, ineffective, decentralized information management habits you’re seeking to solve.

Governing SharePoint requires a clearly defined and managed governance model consisting of user, contributor, approver and senior stakeholder roles, each with specific responsibilities and procedures.

SharePoint Touches the Entire Enterprise

SharePoint, and by extension portals, are not IT projects, they are strategic business and information management projects. Cross-functional governance is the key to implementing and maintaining an effective SharePoint portal. The best and most deeply embraced sites are owned by HR, Communications, or some other non-IT organization. IT is one of the key stakeholders, but the ongoing business information management should be assigned to a different body, outside of IT.

One large Canadian insurance company with 35,000+ users had the best model I’ve experienced. The governance model was led by a cross-functional Executive Steering Committee, while the site was managed by a collaborative and accountable Working Committee. Figure 1 illustrates the entire model.

Governance Model Breakdown

Figure 2

Here’s a more detailed description of each role involved in governance (see Figure 2).

Steering Committee

Each steering committee member is a senior-level executive charged with ensuring that his/her strategic objectives are both clearly defined and being addressed via the portal. The Steering Committee also approves funding and resources for portal initiatives.

Portal Program Manager

While it’s common for the Portal to be managed by IT, you should instead assign portal management to an organization outside of IT, usually either the Communications or Human Resources pillar.

The program manager reviews various site traffic metrics and trends, and analyzes site visits, views, and user paths through the site. The program manager presents these findings to the working committee for discussion, evaluation, opportunities, and next steps. The program manager will (in most cases) manage portal projects and initiatives, and handle the overall budget for the portal.

Working Committee

This team is responsible for the overall management, quality and maintenance of portal content. The working committee should meet bi-weekly or monthly to review current issues, action items, and program status. This group will review and approve new functionality requests, as well as changes/additions to portal navigation and metadata classifications (content types). The committee will also create proposals for new functionality—especially those with associated costs—for funding approval by the Steering Committee.

A key responsibility of the working committee is to ensure all pillars of the enterprise are conforming to the portal’s guiding principles, including labeling, look and feel, and style.

Content Stewards

Usually this is a “power publisher” representing a pillar of the business whose members are both experienced with and passionate about the best practices and principles of information design and web publishing. Content stewards present new functionality requests on behalf of their users for initial approval by the working committee. They also review and present new navigation/taxonomy/information architecture requests for approval by the working committee.

Most importantly, content stewards review and discuss issues of style or content that are not in keeping with the guiding principles for the portal. In this way, the portal is QA’d by the working committee rather than being “policed” by the portal program manager.

Contributors

The Contributors group includes anyone who creates content for the portal. Some will have self-approving rights, others simply the ability to submit content for approval.

Governance in Action

To view this model in practical terms, here’s an example of governance in action. The scenario is that two pillars of the business are vying for funding and resources to support their portal initiatives; one is for the Call Center, one is for Finance.

The Call Center has identified a number of strategic objectives for the coming year, including reductions in:

• Call-handling times
• The number of call transfers to other staff with expertise in a given subject
• The number of call backs to customers

The portal has been gaining traction as the company’s centralized information resource. One site within the portal is dedicated to Call Center content, policies, procedures and regulatory information. But the wheels are coming off; the portal has become a dumping ground, a place where people blithely post documents and web content, with little regard to usability, classification, hierarchy, or search. Consequently, Call Center staff have reverted to using non-SharePoint ad hoc repositories (LAN drives) rather than the portal.

After discussing the strategic requirements with users, Fiona, the Call Center’s content steward, is proposing a Call Center-oriented information hub that will be deemed a business-critical initiative for the portal.

Fiona needs a clearly defined and enforced document library template, associated with new content types. She needs a new search box, scoped to just those Call Center libraries and its unique information types, and a customized document type dropdown box. She needs a news and information web part to inform people of new content and changes to existing content. She’d like to create a RSS feed and encourage people to subscribe.

Brian, the Finance content steward, is also proposing a Finance-oriented project, a new site that will display key performance indicators from the backend finance system, detailing performance of the company’s financials against its yearly plan. He’ll need connections to the financial system via SharePoint’s Business Data Catalogue (BDC) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) designed to show various metrics. He also has some scenario-based interactive spreadsheets he’d like to post via Excel Services.

Working Committee Presentations

At the bi-monthly Working Committee meeting, Fiona, the Call Center content steward, presents her case. She outlines her proposal’s alignment to both the company’s and the Call Center’s strategic initiatives, outlines various stages of her project, and seeks buy-in from the other content stewards on the Committee.

Brian also makes his case by outlining its alignment to Finance’s strategy. All the staff need to understand where the business is from a performance and profitability perspective.

The working committee decides that both projects have merit. The next step is to present them to the Steering Committee for approval.

Steering Committee Approval

In its monthly meeting, the two content stewards present the Steering Committee with their project ideas. By this time, the portal program manager has also analyzed, defined deliverables and created cost estimates for each project.

After hearing both presentations, the Steering Committee notes that Finance already produces a monthly performance report that is posted in PDF format on the portal, which they feel will do for the time being. In contrast, the Call Center is the first line to the company’s customers, so the Steering Committee selects and approves funding for the Call Center initiative.

With the project approved, the portal program manager submits the project plan, identifies key stakeholders, secures resources, and proceeds to create and manage the project.

The Payoff

Creating this sustainable user- and business-centric portal management model will ensure that your SharePoint implementation stays aligned with the business’ goals. It also ensures that the deployed system remains flexible, so that it can continue to evolve and cater to business’ and users’ changing needs.

For more information, check out these related resources:

• Sample Governance Plan
• Key Governance Considerations in a SharePoint Deployment
• Governance Resource Center for SharePoint Server 2007
• Sample Governance Plan
• SharePoint Governance Checklist Guide

Managing the relationship between an organization’s business units and IT is a strategic initiative that can support corporate objectives, bolster program planning, help set implementation expectations, and improve operational score cards … or, it can become a burden and a detriment to open lines of communication.

A liaison model should take into account several company parameters, including sponsorship, size, governance, and collaboration levels, and be tailored to an organization’s culture and design. An effective communication program should be designed to fit within the current environment and have a plan to mature into a model that supports the future state of an organization if it is going to be sustainable.

A well operated and sponsored program has direct benefits including faster time to market, lower overall cost, fewer defects and misinterpreted expectations, and a more collaborative working style that raises the likelihood of success for cross-functional programs and organizational transformation.

Leadership

Stakeholder involvement is typically a catalyst to a program’s success or failure and this is no different with a liaison model. The liaison team should be led by an executive team member, someone with enterprise visibility and the ability to interact with senior management. With this level of sponsorship, strategic initiative support is encouraged and business unit conflicts are mitigated.

Depending on the executive sponsor, the group will probably have an affinity to that leader’s goals. If the group is expected to review spending habits, reporting to the CFO would be an advantage; if the technology portfolio is in need of support, the CIO would be an excellent sponsor. Ideally, the liaison model would be part of a more robust governance effort, as the team’s objectives are invariably linked to corporate improvement initiatives, including balanced scorecard, enterprise risk management, governance and compliance, and process improvement. A model that reports to a chief administration officer or corporate strategic planning will help the group evolve beyond business/IT communication and provide value for multiple stakeholders.

Business/IT communication can be implemented by taking into account team member roles and team structure. Herein, three roles are defined―communicator/contributor, facilitator/educator, and planner/improver―along with three structures (individual, pool, and center of excellence) to provide a framework for initiating and maturing a liaison team.

Team Roles

The role a liaison team plays depends on not only the current state, but what the existing challenges are. Understanding the pain points of the relationship will guide the selection of the appropriate style.

Communicator/contributor – This role tends to be most effective where the relationship is strained or where there is a “super-hero” environment. The liaison would focus on opening the lines of communication and rebuilding trust. With a superhero-oriented IT department, business users must learn to engage the entire department and not to call their IT buddy directly. IT must also respond efficiently. The communicator liaison becomes the bridge between the business and IT. They must be aware of the players, the projects, the insiders, and contribute to planning so that groups feel they have an advocate.

A communicator/contributor should be open and trustworthy with a high emotional intelligence to help diffuse tense situations where blame might traditionally be freely assigned. The liaison might be challenged to redefine the relationships. With patience and several trust building conversations, the communicator will begin to participate in planning and delivery and become the advocate for different groups and perspectives.

The liaison is cautioned in aligning too closely with newly opened relationships as group-think might ensue. Liaisons should also be careful not to provide all the initial suggestions or answers as they will not be effective if viewed as the single point of contact and only trusted resource.