So we are on to the meat of a Governance the Roles and Responsibilities. So we get sometimes caught up in the terminology such as Governance, what is it really. Common definition is:
Defines governance and introduces two key areas to govern: the IT services that host SharePoint Server , and the information architecture used in your portals and other SharePoint Server sites.
Well to govern you need to define who owns it and is responsible for the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
So I have pulled a sample of my opening Section 4 of my sample governance. So I like to define the teams. Think of these as different sub-departments within your organizations. These folks will have key skillsets, tasks, roles, and will also be the ones to assist the organization grow SharePoint and Govern her.
So you see I like to break these teams into (in this case 6 parts) this can be bigger depending on additional technologies we may want to toss in here, and also a Legal or Retention Team if we have a robust Records Management or Librarian on staff. Yes a Librarian on Staff, don’t get me started on how many organizations stink at ECM, or Records Management. I have spent many a day on my soap box discussing how to have a solid SharePoint platform you need a real Information Architecture and Records Management implementation……sorry I will get down now.
What I like to do in my next section is describe and identify the teams, for this post I will pick on the Strategy Team.
Strategy Team:
This team consists of business and IT leaders who provide strategic insight and direction for the SharePoint platform, and are able to drive strategic initiatives in their respective organizations. I like to also identify the departments like: IT, Legal, HR, Finance, etc.
I also make up a small roles matrix for each team…see below.
Individual Roles and Responsibilities
Once I have described and identified each team, I move onto building out a Roles and Responsibilities Matrix. Now this can be pretty massive depending on the team, your team members, skills, and the size of your org. So lets just tackle the first 3 I like to identify, Service Owner’s, Business Champion’s, and IT Help Desk. These are generally universal in all my Governance documents.
What I do is Define a Role,
build a set of Responsibilities or Tasks that these folks will be held too. Think of these as areas we can expand later in the Operational Support area of the Governance.
Then I also like to identify any special Permissions I will need to consider, these usually translate to Permission Levels. This can translate to your Security Matrix, or AD groups at a later date.
Required Skills is focusing on skills, or training that they need to have, but will also be transferable to your user community. Remember that a person cannot do a task effectively if they are not trained and certified.
Roles and Resources Assignment Matrix
So the last of the big matrix’s we are going to create is the Assignment Matrix, now I have seen a few ways to manage this. In the document itself, as a wiki, even as a SharePoint List in your Governance Community site. Your call on this, it just depends on how often you revise, and how big this gets. General rule of thumb is that with a Enterprise deployment, you are looking at 70 lines at least. So think BIG.
What does this part cover, well I like to break it down to the following:
Role: the persons role on the team (collaboration service owner, site admin, etc.) one role per line please.
Contact Name: Yes there full name so not be confused, can also be the domain name.
Location: For you globally diverse teams, how about office locations, or even countries.
Organization: Think of this a Business Unit, or Organizational Unit.
Contact Email: Company email only please, no gmail, aol, hotmail…..unless that is all you got.
Contact Phone: I prefer direct line, or mobile.
Resource Commitment (%): You can see in the diagram I have 100% on me, that is really not realistic for most folks, I mean I like to work 120 hour work week. Common I am writing this at 2:13 am. So think realistic, generally the person will be 20% unless this is the persons job. The Role of SharePoint Administrator will likely be a persons 80%.
Conclusion:
OK so what is the purpose of the Roles and Responsibilities section, if you have not figured it out above it is to:
Identify the Role > Identify the Person > Identify the Skill > Identify the Responsibility
Why to hold them accountable. I hate to hear a person say “I did not know I was responsible for that!” or “No one told me!”
Put it in black and white and put them on the hook. Govern thru documentation, that is where you start, a policy, you can get Darth Vader to enforce it later.