Best Practices for Microsoft SharePoint Governance

Deployment of SharePoint sites requires organizational planning and oversight. This help article provides best practices for SharePoint governance and assumes a working knowledge of SharePoint. The goal is to provide enough structure to eliminate clutter and duplication while still allowing groups to self-organize and get their work done.

Note: SharePoint is the platform used by Microsoft Teams. If you are deploying Teams within Teams, please visit here.

Best Practices

1. Define the group that will set governance for SharePoint.

   1. Who needs to be represented in the organization?

   2. How will this group operate?

2. Decide what needs to be standardized.

   1. What will your naming convention be for sites?

   2. Will you have standard naming convention for site resources (files, etc.)?

   3. What are the criteria for creating a site?

      1. Team sites?

      2. Communication sites?

   4. How will sites be organized? Will you be using hub sites and affiliated site collections?

   5. Will page templates be used by the organization to standardize site design and navigation?

   6. Will you be using term sets (site collection level metadata)?

   7. What are the requirements for site ownership?

3. Create a plan to manage site ownership and avoid ownerless sites.

   1. What is the minimum number of owners required?

   2. If an owner leaves a site, how will that owner be replaced?

   3. How will you ensure that all Teams have the minimum number of owners required?

4. Create a plan to manage site membership.

   1. What are the guiding principles for access to site information? Transparency? Security?

   2. What are the criteria for site membership? Who can add, edit, and delete site contents?

   3. What are the criteria for adding site visitors? Who will be able to access site pages and files?

5. Create a plan to decide and manage metadata used to organize and find site resources.

   1. What metadata (terms sets) will be applied to all sites in a site collection?

   2. What metadata will be applied to all resources within a specific site?

   3. What metadata will be applied to specific document libraries?

6. Create a plan to manage the lifecycle of your sites.

   1. What will your expiration policies be to ensure unused sites are archived and eventually deleted?

   2. How will you find unused sites?

   3. Who will manage this work?

7. Create a plan to ensure security, compliance with regulations, and limit legal liabilities.

   1. How will you use sensitivity tags?

   2. How will you ensure that data needed in a legal proceeding will be preserved?

   3. What will be your schedule for auditing and reporting? Who will be responsible for this activity?

8. Create a plan to regularly review and update governance practices.

   1. How will you collect information on user needs?

   2. Who will decide and approve governance changes?

Resources

Microsoft Intranet Governance Overview

Microsoft Intranet Governance

Create an Effective SharePoint Governance Plan

SharePoint Governance Template