Mark Schneider's SharePoint Taxonomy and Governance Blog

Is there a Missing Link in your SharePoint Plan?

 

Do you feel like there is a "missing link" in your SharePoint plan?  No, I'm not talking about broken links that occur when you migrate existing pages into SharePoint, I mean something more fundamental.  These days SharePoint deployment and configuration are relatively straight forward.  It still takes a great deal of skill and care so don't get me wrong.  But it isn't something that usually requires extensive planning and innovation anymore.  For most companies and most implementations, there is now a growing body of "best practices" that provide solid guidelines for deployment.

But once it is deployed, what do you actually DO with it?  Most of the SharePoint failures that I'm aware of have been technical successes but business failures.  Somewhere between deployment and successful business use there is a missing link.

The answer is in the creation of a policy taxonomy.  This taxonomy is not an ordered structure of nouns used to classify documents.  Essentially the policy taxonomy is a set of business domains that are used to both organize the site structures within SharePoint, but more importantly serve as a method to organize a governance team to oversee and manage SharePoint use "within the cloud" without crushing it.

Each of the seven-to-ten policy taxonomy buckets has a governance owner who is responsible to act as steward for that section of SharePoint use, its policies, look and feel, growth and structure.  Together the various bucket owners form the business governance team for SharePoint and work together to establish enterprise-wide standards.

So there is probably a missing link hiding somewhere in your executive ranks, but it is easy to fix.  In two days the policy taxonomy can be established, agreed to, governance owners assigned, and a project charter written.

Interested in more information?  Please email me at mark@vitalskill.com and put "workshop" in the subject line.

Thanks!

Recently I had the honor of being included in Toby Ward's (Prescient Digital Media) presentation on the key factors in planning for SharePoint success.

His presentation is below:

Planning For Sharepoint Success

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

Register Now for Free Governance and Taxonomy Webcast

I'm offering a free one hour executive overview of the key concepts behind Governance and Taxonomy Planning. 

These webcasts will be offered every other week starting in May.  Space is limited so please register early at http://gatworkshop.eventbrite.com

Meeting information will be sent to your registration name and email address.

Thanks!

New Governance and Taxonomy Planning Webinar - Learn the Key Concepts for $99.00

I'm now offering a 2.5 hour Governance and Taxonomy "core" class as a webinar for $99.00. 

• Want to learn why Governance and Taxonomy planning is so important to SharePoint success? 
• Want to learn how to build a policy taxonomy to govern inheritance within SharePoint?
• Having a hard time coming up with the $995 needed to buy a seat in one of my public Governance and Taxonomy Workshops?

 You'll learn:

• Why governance and taxonomy planning is vital to SharePoint success. 
• How to recognize an effective taxonomy plan and how to avoid the mistakes that can make a taxonomy plan fail.  
• How to develop your taxonomy plan, how to translate it into a SharePoint site and content type structure
• How to establish ongoing business governance for each of the major catagories in your policy taxonomy.

I'm going to offer this workshop every two or three weeks so that everyone can get a chance to fit the webinar into their busy schedules.

To register for the Governance and Taxonomy Webcast on May 7th at 10:00AM CDT [CLICK HERE]

To register for the Governance and Taxonomy Webcast on June 2nd at 10:00AM CDT [CLICK HERE]

 

To read an overview of the Governance and Taxonomy Webcast [CLICKHERE]

Public SharePoint Governance and Taxonomy Workshop

Public SharePoint Governance and Taxonomy Workshop

(Two Days)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SACRAMENTO CALIFORNIA - May 20th and 21st  

$995.00

Sacramento Radisson Hotel (Link Below)                                               

This two-day workshop is designed to help your management team and SharePoint project team understand your organization's key business needs, governance strategy, and informational taxonomy plan in simple and easy-to-understand terms. The content will include:

• EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - A full executive summary of SharePoint and its role in organizational computing

• TAXONOMY PLANNING - Taxonomy planning fundamentals and how-to.  This will include a walkthrough of the workbook and worksheets so you can work through a taxonomy planning session on your own.

• TAXONOMY SAMPLES - Sample taxonomies based on real world solutions from my experience in leading workshops.  These can serve as starting-points to get you close to your final taxonomy.

• GOVERNANCE PLANNING - Governance planning fundamentals, including governance worksheets and a walkthrough on how to jumpstart your governance process.

• PROJECT CHARTER DEVELOPMENT - How to create an effective and simple project charter to support your SharePoint pilot project.

• REQUIREMENTS STRATEGY - An iterative requirements process that can help keep you and the your business stakeholders on the same page.

• ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE - Practical organizational change best practices (from last year?s SharePoint Best Practices Conference) and how to implement them in SharePoint

• PILOT PROJECT SELECTION - How to select a SharePoint pilot project.

 This conference is targeted on the mindset of the business leader and will not be a technically-intense course.  The course is designed to educate leaders and decision-makers in companies implementing SharePoint. The conference also provides IT professionals with the information and skill to be able to communicate the critical aspects of SharePoint governance to their leadership.

[TO REGISTER FOR THE SACRAMENTO CONFERENCE PLEASE CLICK HERE]

[FOR A 50-PAGE OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP CONTENTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE]

Noun Taxonomies and Verb Taxonomies Give Rise to Use Cases

If you spend any time Googling about taxonomies, you will find that there is healthy debate about the usefulness of taxonomies in actual practice.  The problem is that taxonomies can become over structured, confining, and can cripple the information worker's ability to act tactically.

Taxonomies have always referred to nouns.  Taxonomies are classification systems that use a hierarchy of increasingly specific nouns to describe, classify, categorize and organize a series of concepts.  So we have the plant and animal kingdoms.  We have the Periodic Table of the Elements.  We have first, middle and last names.  We have addresses that go from the general (nation) to the specific (street number).

Here is an important thing to remember as you read my blog--I'm driving the creation of a new kind of taxonomy, one that works in the context of automated information management systems.  The taxonomy concepts that I put forth in this blog are (and this is vitally important) VERBS not NOUNS!  My mission is to help organizations define a simple but profound taxonomy of verbs/policies/actions/behaviors that govern how information is put into action.  There is still a need for a NOUN taxonomy, but its purpose is to identify sites, documents, workflows, teams, individuals, audiences, etc. so that they can invoke one of the VERB taxonomy categories.

I call this VERB taxonomy a POLICY taxonomy for wont of a better term.  The marriage of a verb taxonomy with a noun taxonomy describes the organization's culture and business model very neatly.  This means that it is a tool that supports strategic planning, and the application of strategic planning, at every level in the organization.

SharePoint has my attention right now because I have wanted to bring about this shift in thinking about documents, workflows and other elements of organizational models, but there has never been a definitive tool until now.  SharePoint is still in its adolescence, but it is the closest toolset I have ever found.

I unveiled my methodology for using noun and verb taxonomies to create a framework for software development use-cases during the SharePoint Best Practices Conference this past week.  I'll be blogging on the topic next week, if not sooner.  All this talk about taxonomy concepts only matters if it actually helps you manage your data more effectively, faster, and more cheaply than ever before.  I believe the new concept of verb taxonomies is working well amongst my customers.  Now for the biggest stretch of my career. 

The framework that I spoke on at the Torrey Pines made use of a noun and verb taxonomy to map out use-case "regions" and approval/workflow boundaries.  On the one hand you don't want to lock down approvals and workflows--it is important to grant information workers as much tactical freedom as possible.  On the other hand you need to be able structure and manage how workflows and approvals work together to build a coherent knowledge management environment for your organization.

I believe my framework offers just such a tool, and best of all it is very simple to use.  It isn't software, it is a simple paper and pen diagram that can be used to frame use-case and workflow definitions.

Stay tuned....

©Copyright Mark Ragar Schneider, 2009 All Rights Reserved

Justify My Taxonomy and Governance Workshop in One Lawsuit

Well organized and managed data can reduce the impact of a lawsuit.  Open-ended discovery is very, very expensive to support!  So, how does one justify my workshop?  It only takes one lawsuit, win or lose.  But by then it may be too late!

And So Begins the SharePoint Best Practices Conference 2009

It is once again my honor to participate in the SharePoint Best Practices conference co-hosted by Mindsharp and Microsoft.  It is humbling to speak at a conference where so many experts are present at one time.  Not only are the best speakers in the industry present, but the people attending are of the highest possible caliber as well. 

With so many amazing professionals among the speakers and presenters, it is wonderful to be included in the speakers' list.  Accompanied by my youngest son John, I arrived Friday evening.  John and I arrived a couple of days early because the conference is at the La Jolla Torrey Pines Hilton just north of San Diego.  What a wonderful hotel.  The lounge, restaurant and outdoor pool area look out over the 18th fairway at the Torrey Pines golf course, where the Buick Invitational Golf Tournament starts in a couple of days.

John and I drove up the coast, spent some time at the beach in Carlsbad and went for a great hike into the state park right next door to the Torrey Pines golf course.

We had a great time hanging out in the Presidential Suite with various speakers and Mindsharp folks tonight.  Gourmet pizza was on the menu and the Super Bowl was on the big screen.

Just for fun I'll be posting photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/markragarschneider/sets/72157613217598143/ .  The photo set so far is mostly about sunsets, desert hikes and the beach.  Once the conference actually starts there should be more opportunities to post photos of folks and happenings at the conference itself.

©Copyright Mark Ragar Schneider, 2009 All Rights Reserved

A Big Hello to My New Friends at the Ontario Service Safety Alliance

It was an honor to work this week with my new friends at the Ontario Service Safety Alliance in Mississauga Ontario, and work through the Governance and Taxonomy Workshop with them.  If I lived in Canada I would absolutely hire the OSSA to guide me into a culture of safety and service.  They are dedicated, intelligent and very professional, and they laughed at most of my jokes.

©Copyright Mark Ragar Schneider, 2009 All Rights Reserved

Workshop Deliverables

Many people have asked me to provide a list of the specific deliverables that are produced during my two-day Goverance and Taxonomy Workshop.  Here are the basic deliverables.  Please note that I work with the client to taylor the deliverables and processes to best fit their unique objectives.  So, some clients will develop all of these deliverables through the two day workshop, and others will elect to focus their time and energy on a subset.

Governance and Taxonomy

Workshop Deliverables

MODULE 1: SharePoint Overview 

DELIVERABLE

a. A presentation to use in orienting the rest of the organization in the purpose and use of SharePoint 2007.

MODULE 2: Taxonomy Definition and Plan.

DELIVERABLES

a. List of Existing Taxonomies

b. List of products and services that need to be supported by the taxonomy plan

c. List of Regulatory Constraints that the taxonomy plan must address

d. List of “Line Of Business” systems and a high-level understanding of how the taxonomy will unify information across the various LOB systems.

e. List of Major Corporate Initiatives and high-level view of how the taxonomy supports each initiative

f. List of Major Distribution Channels and high-level view of how the taxonomy supports each channel

g. List of Major Governance Groups and high-level view of how these support and integrate with SharePoint collaborative governance

h. Top-Level Process Taxonomy

i. Validation Process to test the Top-Level Process Taxonomy

j. Secondary taxonomies and rubrics relating them to the Top-Level Process Taxonomy

MODULE 3: Governance Definition and Plan

DELIVERABLES

a. Federated Governance Model

b. Governance Goals and Best Practices Document

c. Governance Escalation Model

d. List of Governance Stakeholders and Their Goals

e. List of Federated Governance Teams

f. Org Chart for Governance Team

g. IT Governance Org Chart

h. Top-Level Site Administration Governance Team Org Chart

i. Site-Collection Administrators Governance Team Org Chart

j. Site

k. Site Owners Governance Team Org Chart

MODULE 4: Pilot Project Plan

DELIVERABLES

a. Project Framework

b. Priority Success Factors for A SharePoint Implementation Project

c. Risk Assessment Model

d. Project Information Worksheet

e. Project Design Worksheet (High-Level)

f. ROM Milestones and Schedule Worksheet

g. Core Project Team Roster and Roles

h. ROM Budget Worksheet

i. Risks and Risk Mitigation Worksheet

j. Project Constraints Worksheet

k. Project Assumptions Worksheet

5. MODULE 5: SharePoint Requirements Management

DELIVERABLES

a. Requirements Definition Model

b. Requirements Model for Collaborative Governance

c. Requirements Traceability Matrix (High-Level)

6. MODULE 6: Next Day Action Plan

DELIVERABLES

a. Specific Task Assignments, Metrics and Deadlines for Immediate Action

b. Short-Term Accomplishments Lists, Assignments and Deadlines

C. Elevator Speech

 © 2009, Mark Ragar Schneider, All Rights Reserved