How to Create a SharePoint Strategy
A Guide for SharePoint Success
By Emma Catignani
Introduction
This SharePoint strategy template has been created to guide you through the process of creating a workable SharePoint strategy. This template highlights a number of different areas that require planning to create a SharePoint strategy. The strategy areas are:
Each section has an introduction to the topic and a checklist of the major points to cover when creating your SharePoint strategy. Complete each of these sections and you will have enough information to create your own workable SharePoint strategy.
1. Setting up a SharePoint Strategy Committee
As in any major project, rigours project planning is essential for a successful SharePoint Deployment. Clearly defined roles and scope will ensure that everyone working on the project works together and towards the same goal. For a successful SharePoint deployment it is essential that either an individual or a group of people (depending on the size of your deployment and organisation) own the SharePoint instance. This means clearly defining who will look after and maintain SharePoint on a long-term basis. This group should be made up from representatives from all the stakeholders groups.
Checklist
Create Strategy Team and define roles and responsibilities.
Clarify who owns SharePoint within your organisation.
Include roles for an executive champion (someone who will push the initiative through at executive level) and a business champion (this person will get support for the initiative at end user level).
Create Strategy Teams to address specific strategy issues (i.e. information management, user information, training, etc.).
Establish a communication plan.
Who will implement the communications plan?
The frequency of communications.
What the communications will contain.
The format they are sent out in.
Create a process for tracking, approving and recording changes.
2. Information Architecture
Information Architecture is the process of structuring and arranging information in a way that allows users to find information intuitively. With more and more information available at the click of the button it is important to plan and structure information in a way that is easy for the user to navigate. If information is not structured properly two situations can arise:
a) Users can’t find anything of relevance to them; they get frustrated and cannot complete tasks.
OR
b) Users are bombarded with too much information at the one time; they are overwhelmed and cannot complete tasks.
In order to avoid these situations an information architecture plan is essential. By planning the structure of the information held on your system and filtering it to the relevant users your SharePoint deployment will be more successful.
Checklist
Define Information Architecture and how this fits in with your current strategy.
Inform stakeholders of the importance of information architecture in this project.
Create wireframes for the most important pages within your site (a wireframe is a rough sketch detailing the look and feel of a page).
Create a site map to plan structure.
Gather together a list of important documents used within your organisation and the actions taken with them to create content types.
3. Site Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of classification, taxonomy within SharePoint refers to the process of classifying all the information held in the site to make it easier to use and navigate. Using a consistent taxonomy throughout the site will help users. Taxonomy should be clearly defined at the start of the deployment process and followed consistently throughout the project. For example is some of the strategy team refer to HR department as HR but the rest of the team call it Personnel, although both terms refer to the same team it is going to cause confusion. Deciding on a naming convention and then sticking with it will eliminate this problem like this from arising.
Checklist
Plan taxonomy early on in site creation
Give one group of people control over taxonomy
Update and monitor taxonomy to ensure it grows with the site
Define core content types and include in site templates
4. Site Policies
It is important to define early on in your SharePoint planning what a site is, what it will hold and what function it will have. These policies will help everyone involved in the project have a clear view of what SharePoint is and its purpose in your organisation. If for example you have a mix of team sites, reference sites and sites functioning as applications it is important to define the purpose of each so as not to have multiple sites filling one purpose. This will help your users as they will know what to expect, and it help streamline the project and hopefully keep costs down. Site maintenance and service level agreements should also be discussed and planned at this stage, these are agreements made the person or persons responsible for maintaining your SharePoint infrastructure. This will set out, among others, the expected time scales for problem resolution and expected communication should a problem arise.
Checklist
Decide on the main site types within your organisation.
Create definitions for each site, what function it will have, where it will sit and who will control it, etc.
Define service level agreement for the time take to approve a new site.
Define a timescale for problem resolution through a help desk.
Discuss performance issues – how fast should the site load onsite and offsite?
5. Deployment and Configuration
Once site policies have been decided upon the next stage in this process is to consider how users will deploy and configure these sites. Approval guidelines and site creation policies will define who, if anyone requires approval to create a site and what customisations they can then do on that site. SharePoint works best when power is devolved to the users, this means giving users an appropriate level of control over their site, allowing them to make changes as and when they need to. This does not mean giving them free reign but instead giving users enough flexibly to make minor changes when needed. In order for this strategy to work it has to be clearly defined what users can and can’t do, this gives the strategy team overall control but does not over burden them as mundane and day-to-day customisation can be completed without the need for them to get involved.
Checklist
How much customisation will users be able to do to their site?
- Define user groups and the customisation skills they will have.
How and when are site templates used.
Which groups are allowed to create sites and will they require approval?
Who will approve site creation?
6. Code Management
Although SharePoint has a number of excellent out-of-the-box functions your deployment may require some further development. If development is outsourced policies for communicating with outside agencies, what is expected from them and documentation required should be considered. If development is done in-house then the strategy team must decide where development takes place and where the code is stored.
Checklist
Create communication plan for additional development (if outsourced)
Define policies for creating, storing and deploying code (if done in-house)
What documentation must be supplied with code?
Is on-going code support required?
7. Branding
Many organisations want to change the look and feel of SharePoint to fit in with their current branding. It is up to the strategy team to decide which sites will be branded, how deep they want to branding to go, and how to manage the branding process. It is possible for each site within SharePoint to have a different look and feel – do the strategy team want to allow for individuality on their sites or do they want a consistent look and feel?
Checklist
Decide on a template for what a SharePoint site will look like
Which sites will have branding?
Create a policy for allowing (or not allowing) customisation at individual site level
Is branding consistent though all content created on the site?
8. Infrastructure
Any SharePoint deployment will require a trained SharePoint server administrator *, this person will look after the server SharePoint is on and other infrastructure associated with it. Where SharePoint is held and how it is managed is important to ensure the deployment is successful.
*After the initial deployment period is over SharePoint maintenance will only account for around 1% of this person’s time. Therefore it is not necessary to employ a dedicated server administrator, instead train someone who is already looking after the servers within your organisation to manage SharePoint.
Checklist
What firewall restrictions are in place for outbound connections?
Create disaster recovery plan.
Have back-up and restore procedures in place and practiced before full deployment.
Ensure the administration team have the correct hardware.
9. Testing
Testing is essential for a successful SharePoint deployment, deploy without testing at your own risk!
Getting a cross section of users to test the site and report back to the strategy team can help minimise time lost during deployment. Test frequently and test early to ensure that the sites you are creating actually work, this will reduce the amount of time spent having to undo configuration.
Remember the users are always right – if they don’t like the layout of a page or the structure of the site then change it to something they do like. The user will dictate the structure of the site and it is essential to follow what they are saying. If the users feel ignored by the strategy team and don’t like using SharePoint they will stop using it and it will become a failure.
Checklist
Pick a cross-section of users to test SharePoint
Create mechanisms for test group to report back to strategy team
Clearly define what you want the test group to test
Create process for examining and acting on test groups feedback
10. Information Management
Managing the flow of information and in and out of SharePoint is an important task that is unfortunately often forgotten about. During the initial planning everyone is keen to see their information on the site, but what happens after this initial push? Someone has to be there to ensure that information is kept up to date, is updated frequently and also make sure that old and out of date information is removed or placed in such a way users know it is no longer relevant.
Once it has been established that someone (or a group of people, depending on the size of your organisation) is going to manage information on your site it is important to create policies to guide the flow of information. This includes deciding - who gets to see what, what they can do with it, how long information is held on the system and what to do with it after that time is up.
Checklist
Define document user policies and information management policies for information held within the site.
Create processes for creating further information policies and approval processes.
Create guidelines for expiration, compliance and auditing information held within the site.
Establish policies for holding confidential information on SharePoint.
Is remote access allowed or not?
11. Operational Concerns
Planning for deployment is only one part of creating a strategy, it is also important to plan for on-going maintenance and management. One operational concern that needs to be considered is how to monitor SharePoint? The strategy team need to monitor the site to find out how it is growing and how users are interacting with it to properly manage and maintain it. As well as planning for on-going monitoring it is also important to plan for the worst, these means creating policies detailing how to manage downtime, disaster recovery and data recovery if the worst should happen.
Checklist
Create a policy for communicating scheduled downtime to users.
Create reporting procedure and response to unscheduled downtime.
Plan for single file recovery, single or multiple site recovery, server recovery and finally data centre recovery.
Define site and content archive procedures.
Agree on a maximum site quota, and put processes into place for users to request a larger site quota if required.
Create a schedule for analysing site usage reports and acting on them.
12. Education and Training
When planning a SharePoint deployment it is essential to take into account the learning curve involved for all users. End Users will require training and guidance on how to use SharePoint for a number of weeks after it is deployed. Productivity will be reduced for a period of time after deployment as End Users get used to their new working environment. However, with training and on-going support provided for your End Users SharePoint can become an integral part of their working day and will soon increase productivity.
Checklist
Include training in all budgets from the start of the project
Outline training requirements for End Users, Super Users, SharePoint Designers*, System Administrators* and Web Developers*
Create training schedule to ensure staff are comfortable with SharePoint for the first deployment
Decide what certain groups are allowed to do within SharePoint and train accordingly
Create an on-going learning plan including drop-in clinics and online help
Perform training audits
*Only required if these tasks are completed in-house