There’s a lot being written on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) governance these days.  Just about anyone who’s implementing SharePoint has been told that a well defined governance program is a must.  To that end, there are plenty of free resources to be found regarding SharePoint governance which can be used in helping to define a well built, and fully encompassing ECM governance plan, even if you’re not using SharePoint.  It should be noted that, while these templates are a good place to start, they are not in themselves complete enough to provide a true ECM governance program.  There are a few elements that must also be taken into consideration that are dependent upon the organizations implementing them.

Enterprise vs. departmental deployments

Many companies have been able to get by without a true ECM governance program due to the fact that the existing deployments were departmental in nature.  Changes to the system were driven at the departmental level, along with IT involvement.  The impact of the changes had no impact on other departments.  With SharePoint however, numerous departments are typically deployed and, as a result, the IT department must interface with more areas of the business.  Changes to one area have a strong likelihood of impacting others.  While it’s very convenient for the department to own their technology and dictate the usage of their own systems, that approach is inefficient and detrimental to an enterprise-wide information management strategy.  The fact that SharePoint governance is such a hot topic has a lot to do with the technology, but also that enterprise systems require more cooperation than do departmental deployments.

Effective ECM Governance must include the business side of the house

A key lesson learned from the departmental deployments is that the getting the business involved is critical to the ongoing viability of the system.  While the IT organization may have the database architects, taxonomists/information architects, systems analysts and others needed to maintain the systems, the business users still own the responsibility for how they interact with that system.  If there is a change to the information architecture, it’s normally because the business requested it.  For example, if a new metadata field is requested, it’s not because IT wanted it, but rather because the business needed it.  Another benefit of bringing the business into the process is that, when changes are requested, it’s easier to communicate the impacts of those changes to the other members of the business community.  A change requested by one business group may negatively impact other business groups.  The role of the governance program is to ensure that changes are handled in an orderly way and do not negatively impact other areas of the business.

Executive sponsorship is critical

As they say, if it’s not important to the executives, how important should it really be for anyone else?  In this case, the executives must also include the business, and not just IT.  The reason that executive sponsorship is so critical is that changes cost money.  It’s the role of the executives to provide the proper funding to ensure the ongoing viability of the platform.  It’s also the role of the executives to act on change requests that are controversial.  The business and IT organizations can and will request changes that may not make fiscal sense and “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer, though not always the right one.  While many of the free templates describe the importance of executive sponsorship, they do not and cannot know who the best sponsor is within the company.  Corporate culture and personnel dynamics will play a role in determining who are the right people.

Governance is an inclusive process

In developing compliance programs, I like to use the RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed) process.  The success of a governance program is dependent upon the how well the roles, policies and procedures are defined.  It’s critical to understand, for any change that will be made, who is responsible for making the change.  What is often missing in governance programs, especially when one considers enterprise deployments, is the determination of who should be consulted before making a change and who needs to be informed that a change has been made.  Every company has subject matter experts who may not be a part of the governance body, but exist witihin the business community.  Those people should be included in the governance process.  Those individuals may not specifically own the element of the system being changed, but they may interact with it and be impacted by the change.  Bringing subject matter experts into the change process will greatly improve the impact of the changes on the user community.  With that said, it is important to limit the number of actual decision makers.

Summary

There’s no one-size-fits-all program for ECM governance, but there are some great free tools out there, specifically on the SharePoint side of things.  They can help get a jump on defining a governance program, but don’t necessarily take into consideration the importance of bringing the business into the process.  In the case of a blended SharePoint and traditional ECM solution, there is a lot to be gained as well.  Governance programs will vary from company to company so finding the right fit may take a little bit of trial and error.  Then again, that’s what governance is all about…managing change.