SharePoint governance - a Parliamentary perspective

Recently I've been thinking about Governance for intranet sites, SharePoint and intranets as a whole.

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to present alongside some great folks from Telcom NZ, The department of Transport NZ, and NZ Parliament.

The team from NZ Parliament have come up with a governance structure that works really well for them in a very technically, politically and legally complex environment.



I talked to Tracy Parsons from NZ Parliament recently and she outlined what the force was that drove the move to this structure and the benefits they derive from it.

Originally the governance structure was setup quite differently. Large web site and intranet development projects were initiated and resulted in very project - focused governance structures being put in place. The projects transitioned form implementation to work as usual, this highlighted how project focused governance structures don’t suit work as usual operations.

The two senior business owners, who had spearheaded the strategic vision and delivery of the projects, found themselves involved in ever increasing numbers of meetings and levels of detail. “I’ve had enough!” was the point from which, a new role was created to oversee the day-to-day project and operational activities . This new role freed the senior managers to continue with their strategic work while providing the continuity required for business as usual operations.

It was at this point that the two agencies involved, the Parliamentary Service and the Office of the Clerk, engaged help to come up with a governance model that would work within the constraints of the agencies and stakeholders involved. Through this process the two agencies and their staff came to the solution you see here.

The solution to their governance issue was to have two separate groups connected by the two people in the new role. This new role manages the agendas for the monthly Website Governance Group (WGG) and the bi weekly agendas for the Website Management Committee. This new structure means no more project specific steering committees, less meetings all round, as well as greater awareness amongst all staff of the overall workload and organisational drivers.

This governance structure isn’t without it’s issues, project managers new to the structure and the Agile methodology (used by the entire web team at NZ Parliament) do find it hard. It is no longer possible to promote the importance of the project you’re working on over other projects by lobbying senior management. The coordinating role between the business as usual level and strategic level is able to mediate these issues. Similarly the structure provides a way to help resolve the competing requirements of the two agencies which support Parliament.

The result of having this structure is that more work is done at the right time, delivering the best outcomes, for the right reasons than ever before.

With Tracy’s words of experience in mind I set out to come up with a governance structure for the small part of our corporate SharePoint site that I have responsibility for.

My goal was to put in place a governance structure and processes that didn't demand too much time from senior staff, engaged all the stake holders and ensured buy in from the content / business owners [if you didn't win jargon bingo in that last sentence , you're not concentrating]

I also needed to keep the barrier to entry for setting this up as low as possible so the whole thing was labelled a management process, rather than a governance structure.

This is what I have proposed, it has yet to be confirmed as our way forward but I thought it useful to share. I'll share the outcome and what we finally put into practice at a later date.



The roles and accountability stack up like this



For those of you familiar with Toby Ward you’ll notice that I’ve used the same wording he outlines in his ‘how long is a piece of string post’ which to my mind distils out great definitions of

• Vision
• Goals
• Objectives

I've added in tasks to take the process right through to the actual things that people do to achieve the measurable objectives. Possibly this is going too far but it works for me :-)


What do you think ? What black holes do you see opening beneath our feet ?

Many thanks to Tracey, the Parliamentary Service, and the Office of the Clerk for help sharing their experience.

DorjeM