Tactical SharePoint Governance with ControlPoint
"Governance is most definitely something that should be a task on your corporate checklist, something that is done up front to provide guidance and direction for shaping your company infrastructure, especially your IT systems. At the core of governance are one or more company objectives -- the things that drive your business forward, and which help employees strive to improve. Example might be "Reducing the number of defects in our processes to zero" or "Improving employee innovation." Your corporate governance should take these objectives in mind, with all systems and initiatives taking into consideration how they can best move these objectives forward."
From AIIM.org, Governance: Overused, Misunderstood, Flavor of the Month?
Ask ten people to define governance, and you'll receive ten different answers. Many of us have participated in governance initiatives inside and outside of IT, but what all of these plans must fundamentally include are
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strategic components that correlate systems (like SharePoint) to corporate goals (like reducing the cost of IT, or maybe improving the speed at which innovation moves from idea to action), and
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tactical components that allow you to measure, guide, and when necessary, control, as a way of implementing the strategic components (like site guidelines, and content database limitations).
One of the most common questions we hear from the community: Is ControlPoint a governance tool? The answer is both no and yes. With the above definition, where governance is concerned with defining the rules and guidelines for how SharePoint is managed, the answer is no. Governance is more of a process, and it is much bigger than a single system or tool, and should help move your company toward your corporate goals. But for setting up and enforcing the rules and guidelines defined by your governance strategy, then yes, ControlPoint is the best tool on the market for centrally managing a single or multiple SharePoint environments.
For example, one of the more common tactical scenarios happens when someone leaves the company. There is usually a process for locking down their access rights through Active Directory, but it may not be so straight-forward within SharePoint. SharePoint does not provide a method for tracking all sites and content within an environment related to a single user, much less across multiple environments. As a result, you may have sites and content floating out there with dubious ownership.
ControlPoint allows administrators to setup and subscribe to many out-of-the-box and custom reports, all of which are dynamic and actionable -- which means that they both provide data about what is happening in your systems, while also allowing the admin to make the necessary changes in real-time from the report. An 'Inactive User' report could be set up, published daily or weekly, to flag all SharePoint end users who no longer appear in Active Directory, allowing the admin to remove a user across multiple sites, site collections, or even farms -- all from one ControlPoint report, security trimmed based on their accountability. The admin can then reassign the content and permissions, as needed.
This is just one scenario. Through dynamic reports and quickly "pivoting" views into different aspects of your SharePoint environment, ControlPoint allows you to quickly take command of your environment, and make your governance strategy actionable. ControlPoint allows for real-time policy enforcement for Site and Item creation/deletion. For example, the governance model might include Site Owners creating sites but only Team sites.
Looking for more help with your governance strategy? Our website includes a quick overview of what should go into your governance plan, but you may also be interested in reading our whitepaper The Five Secrets to controlling Your SharePoint Environment. And to see what ControlPoint can do for you, download a free evaluation version.