Defining Governance Roles and Responsibilities

One of the more important things to ensure success in SharePoint 2010 governance is to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of the parties involved are well defined not only in the rollout, but in the day-to-day processes in a SharePoint deployment and its maintenance. It is often underestimated what the day-to-day maintenance will be for the “steady-state” deployment of SharePoint.

Often, the emphasis is placed on the IT administrator, whereas little emphasis is placed on necessary business roles, designer roles, or even IT support structures. It’s common to find entire roles undefined and failures can definitely happen as a result.

To start with, the organization should define the SharePoint farm administrator and site collection administrators. Key stakeholders, project managers, and business analysts can also add value to the governance process. For example, defining a “SharePoint steering committee chairperson” and “taxonomy tzar” can enhance the involvement of individuals in specific areas of the ongoing maintenance of the SharePoint 2010 environment. Members of the SharePoint steering committee may not be technical in nature, but will bring their individual perspectives to the process and help drive adoption of the technologies (and often, funding for specific initiatives).

Many organizations use a RACI charting strategy, which stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. A RACI chart is a simple and powerful vehicle for communication. It is used for defining and documenting responsibility. For each aspect of the project, both the initial rollout and the day-to-day management should have the people and their roles identified as well as the level of their involvement. This helps keep resources focused on their tasks and levels of involvement and typically enhances communications paths. Often, roles and responsibilities cross group and team lines. Figure 24.3 provides a sample RACI table for Company ABC.

Figure 24.3. Sample RACI table for roles and responsibilities.