Register for the web cast

Tuesday May 29th 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM BST

SharePoint is a disruptive technology; deployment makes people think about and change the way they work.

Even with the most rigorously planned, well implemented and business-aligned SharePoint environments, there’s often something missing – people just aren’t using the platform in the right way and as a result the original investment goals aren’t being met.

Effective governance helps organisations to adopt SharePoint for the right reasons, make sure the platform is fit for purpose and as a business see the value of a well-managed, optimised, controlled platform. But what does it take to achieve governance excellence? And how you can get started with creating accountability and responsibility around it? How do you support and encourage the organisation to really change the way they work?

Axceler are hosting a webinar with Andrew Woodward, SharePoint MVP and owner of 21apps – market leaders in SharePoint Governance – where we’ll be exploring the key pillars of SharePoint Governance and discussing how you can create a Centre for Excellence around governance in your organisation.

On the webinar you’ll learn about:

• The core elements of SharePoint Governance
• Ways to measure the value of effective governance
• How to justify and create a Centre of Excellence internally
• How to embed accountability and responsibility into the fibre of your business
• How to gain greater visibility and control of your SharePoint environment

We hope you can join us for this informative webinar so we can help you get started with the right insights, guidance, processes and tools to achieve governance excellence in your organisation.

Register for the web cast

Tuesday May 29th 10:30 AM to 11:30 AM BST

If your an experienced SharePoint consultant or have been running SharePoint 2010 for a while a quick look at the Office, Office365 and SharePoint track you may be a little disappointed, especially if you’ve just been to the International SharePoint Conference.

The elements from this track that stand out for me are around SharePoint Online and Office365

• Building SharePoint Online Applications in a Hybrid World with Steve Fox
• Building Integrated Office 365, SharePoint Online and Office Solutions using BCS and LOB data
• Making the most of search in Microsoft SharePoint Online
• Zero to Office 365 Hero in 75 minutes

But these sessions alone aren’t enough to justify the event, so what else is there?

Its not all about SharePoint

What makes a great SharePoint consultant stand out from a good one is the ability recommend the correct solution and not just the one they know most about.

If you are a SharePoint person and looking at what TechEd offers you take a look at the other sessions, open up and explore other areas and approaches.  Areas that I would recommend you look at

• The Database and Business and Intelligence Track is covering all things SQL 2012 – pay specific attention to the significant developments in BI in SQL 2012. You will find some SharePointy sessions in here but personally I would look to get submerged in the whole SQL content
• Windows Azure if your not aware of, have never done anything with or don’t think it has any impact on you…  time to think again.  A couple of sessions that jump out for me

• Application Integration Futures: The RoadMap and what’s next on Windows Azure
• Hybrid will rule: Options to connect, extend and integrate applications in your Data Center and Windows Azure
• Mobile + Cloud: Building Mobile Applications with Windows Azure  (we all know the SharePoint Mobile experience is painful, learn how to address it)
• Windows Azure Today & Tomorrow with Scott Guthrie
• And to round things off look at some theory sessions in the Architecture & Practices track to see how it should be done

In conclusion, don’t dismiss TechEd as not relevant to you as a SharePoint person, consider it as an opportunity to explore new areas and to build some core skills and capabilities that will support your SharePoint work over the coming years.

At 21apps we had to make a decision late last year as two conferences we absolutely wanted to be part of fell on the exact same dates. The conferences in question were

• International SharePoint Conference 2012 in London
• Share 2012 in Atlanta

The reason these two conferences are important to 21apps is that they offered the opportunity to talk about the business side of SharePoint, with Share2012 begin a dedicated conference and the International SharePoint Conference dedicating a track to business and having a track record of delivering awesome events and located in our home market.

The challenge we had was the dates for these conferences were the same in 2012, and are going to be the same in 2013.  So how do you decide which is the right one for you?

The event location is probably the most important decision for most attendee’s.  Getting budget to fly to the US for a few days conferences is not easy, especially when you consider the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Vegas later this year.

For 21apps we are in the lucky position of being invited to be part of both events.  Andrew headed up the Business Track for ISC London and Ant did a session followed by an extra one day workshop on SharePoint Requirements with Serious Games.

It’s worth noting that there is no money to be made from doing these events,  the hope for us is that we connect with people and demonstrate our skills to allow us to secure work with people after the events.

How do they compare?

Using our new #RoobarbStudio we sketched out the pros and cons (based on our experience, needs and expectations) for each conference and then compared the two based on what an Attendee would need to consider in making a choice.

Some may be wanting us to provide a detailed what was positive/negative on each.  However we feel that would not be fair and any feedback in this format we will provide to the conference organisers to help them make the events even better than they are today.

We did however come to a conclusion about both conferences that should make it easy for people to make a decision.  If you want to know:

“How To…” >> Go to International SharePoint Conference

“Why and What…” Go to Share Conference

This is not to say that there isn’t an element of the “why and what” in ISC London, there was, but it was presented by experienced consultants with many years of experience with a view to helping the audience understand how they might approach a SharePoint project.

In Share2012 there was also an element of “How To” but this is not the focus and it is significantly weighted towards customer case studies and showing what people had done and why.

In ISC London there is a weighting towards consultants and practitioners, people who are looking to learn how to do SharePoint projects from people who have the “implementation” battle scars.

At Share2012 the number of attendees is about 1/2 of those at ISC London, with the weighting more on the actual end business customers looking to get reassurance that similar companies have done what they hope to do and to confirm they have made the right choices, picking up some tips to hopefully avoid a few pitfalls and gaining significant ideas about how SharePoint can be used in a business context.

So which is better?

It would be like comparing apples and oranges – both conferences offer different experiences and with different focuses.  ISC London this year took steps to promote and develop the business ideas which will evolve and develop.  The SHARE conference continued to refine a very business user and customer case study focused event that targets the needs highlighted through extensive research of the business users of SharePoint.

Our recommendation would be that you should look to attend both.  They each offer enough difference to make them compatible and complimentary.  At 21apps are planning to split up promote, collaborate, learn and come back and share our experiences next year like we did this.

If you can’t justify both – you may want to consider the focus of what you are looking for:

“How To…” >> Go to International SharePoint Conference

“Why and What…” Go to Share Conference

Finally, if you want to read more about our individual experiences at the conferences this year, then you can read more here:

SHARE 2012 Atlanta – A Personal Review by Ant

International SharePoint Conference – A Personal Review by Andrew

Andrew and Ant

My take on the conference is going to be somewhat different to most as I had the pleasure/job/challenge of leading the new for 2012 Business Track. Having spoken at the previous conferences (excluded last year when new baby duties took precedence) Steve Smith invited me to help out on the developer track.

As you may be aware my focus over the few years or so has moved very much away from the coding side of things, I still promote and encourage good development techniques, I just don’t write much code for people today.  This left me with a challenge, do I dust off Visual Studio and step up to the plate or do I stick to the path I have chosen and look to help business get real value from their investment in SharePoint?

The decision was easy – leading the business track it was.

The Approach

Planning for this event started, for me at least, about 8 months before the event.  Steve was keen that ISCLondon would not be just another conference, he wanted to build on the the success of previous events and to do this needed to shake things up a little.

The biggest single change in approach was to allow the Business, IT Pro and Dev tracks to create a journey that did not just last 1 hour or a couple of sessions.  These tracks would be a full 16 hours, 3 days of joined up end to end story taking the audience from start to finish – no more here’s one I made earlier, or we don’t have time to cover this really important bit.

So the business track was a single thread, with 7 speakers (there were some last minute changes to add to the fun) covering the things that business need to consider and do in order to take a project from inception to success. Drawing on the experience of the speakers to provide a journey – a “how to” guide for business people.

Do I think it worked?

Yes – absolutely – the fact we had 120 people pretty much camped in the same room for 3 days was a testament to this.

One of the greatest additions we made to this track was the introduction of Chris Shipton to do graphic recording of all the sessions.

The sessions

The best way is to slideshow the visuals from Chris of each of the sessions.  Some of the pictures here were taken by Matt Groves, you’ll see more of his great pics from the event on his blog.

My Experience

As always the event organisation was brilliant and the parties continue to amaze  (although I missed the main one as I watched Chelsea beat Barcelona to reach the champions league final )

Having a joined up session track that brings all of the speakers together to link back to a common topic was hard work, but ultimately proved a great success.  The feedback I received both personally and from others confirmed this.

That we built a small community of 120+ people who took part in the sessions and engaged throughout was wonderful.

Unlike other conferences Steve doesn’t do speaker feedback so i don’t have any quotes or stats to provide – if you attended and have a view please add you take on the business track below.

I would like to also thank the other speakers Rob Foster, Brad Smith, Bill English, Paul Turner, Sharon Richardson and Steve Smith – without whom this would have been much easier impossible.

Next Year

Even before this years event ended we had ideas for next year,  I know I will plan the serious games session earlier if we do it – running around London on Tuesday was not my idea of fun.

So in summary, I personally believe it was a great success, it demonstrated the value of doing a dedicated business focused track and is something I will look to help improve on for next year.

I welcome any feedback or thoughts on how that could be done.

We are situated in the uber cool Zellig Building, feel free to give us a call and pop by and see us sometime?

Anyway, we have decided that our first workshop is going to be on Thursday 31st May and will be on the topic of SharePoint Requirements Gathering:

Register Here:
“Effective SharePoint requirements Gathering with Serious Games”

AND if you live or work in Birmingham, you qualify for a £50 discount on the workshop price… Just Enter use the code ‘BrumCustard21′ or register on this link:
I Want the Birmingham Workshop Discount!

Be honest as we WILL be checking up on you!

Workshop Overview

Getting business requirements for SharePoint is hard!:

• Are you having trouble getting your business users to articulate their problems and requirements?
• Do your find your business users dont know what they want?
• Are you finding it too hard to prioritise requirements, everything is a “Must Have”?
• Does it feel too difficult aligning requirements to your business strategy?
• Is mapping your business requirements to SharePoint features really hard?
• Are you defining your requirements based on the SharePoint feature list?

This exclusive workshop will give a hands-on practical application of the use of Serious Games techniques to improve the quality of business requirements and facilitate deep user and business stakeholder engagement throughout the envisoning, scoping, requirements and prioritisation activities in your SharePoint projects. Techniques include those found in:

• Innovation Games(R)
• Gamestorming
• 21apps developed techniques.

Join this deep-dive workshop for an overview of the background and benefits of using Serious Games and to learn how Innovation Games techniques can be applied to SharePoint projects for SMEs up to global corporations. This workshop will also discuss how 21apps has successfully utilized these techniques.

The workshop will then go into some deep-dive, real-life, and hands-on exercises and discussions using a selection of appropriate games such as SailBoat, Product Box, Prune the Product Tree, Spider Web, Rivers of Information, Requirements Rainbow and Remember the Future. These practical discussions and exercises will help attendees realize the value of Serious Games and give some insights into how they can apply these techniques to their SharePoint projects.

Lessons:

• Understanding of how Serious Games can add significant value to your SharePoint kit-bag
• How to apply the right techniques at the right time to solve common SharePoint challenges
• Tips and tricks to run super-effective facilitation workshops
• Have lots of fun!

We look forward to seeing you at our workshop, register today as there’s only space for 12 people and it’s going to be awesome!

At 21apps we use Office 365 and SharePoint Online extensively, we don’t work in a traditional office environment and we are more than likely to be working in different counties or even countries!

You probably already know about the desktop email add-in harmon.ie and it’s benefits; I mentioned these briefly in the video I did for Harmon.ie recently entitled “SharePoint Social Software Bubbles”, well I’ve been lucky enough over the past couple of weeks to be able to beta test the latest edition to the Harmon.ie product family.

Harmon.ie Mobile

So this little beauty gives you the power of desktop Harmon.ie for SharePoint on your mobile device, in my case the iPhone. So this post is what I think, so far…

Set-up is pretty straightforward and then you’re in, you have full access to your SharePoint sites and sub-sites:

Harmon.ie browsing sites

You can tag (favourite) document libraries or at lower levels actual documents with one click and then get updates when they are changed.

Harmon.ie doc updates

At a document level you get the options you would expect and need if you’re away from your PC and doing work:

Harmon.ie Document Info

The ability to modify meta data (modifying Enterprise Keywords coming soon), open the document and check-out are really useful, but as you would expect the ease of sending a link to the document in SharePoint to a colleague nicely formatted and readable and exceptionally easily, is, for me the key part of Harmon.ie Mobile.

This came to the fore a couple of weeks ago when I travelled over to Atlanta for SHARE 2012, you may not know but for a UK traveller mobile data is stupidly expensive in the US, so the ability to quickly connect and send links to content in our SharePoint Online Intranet direct to my colleagues rather than using EXPENSIVE attachments, was a life saver being away for a week at an extremely busy conference!

I also found in my short experience with the product that integrated search was one of the most extremely useful features; getting asked for a document and being able to tap in a search and attach a link to an email and fire off in seconds is impressive.

There’s still some more functionality that I think is missing from the product (which I’m feeding back to the product team), but with the forthcoming ability to edit Enterprise Keywords on a document and fixes to some UI issues when working with long URLs in the iPhone all in the pipeline already, it won’t be log before Harmon.ie Mobile becomes a key mobile app for me and although some elements were a bit “twitchy” shall we say, it never crashed on me and I never felt like I wanted to delete the app from my already crowded iPhone!

I didn’t get a chance to really push the app to the limits (social and more complex operations)  and explore all it has to offer, mainly because during the beta test there wasn’t that much “document activity” going on (we are only a 2 person org) and I was “playing alone”…

Overall its a great addition to the desktop solution we already use extensively; it plays directly in the “getting the simple things done easier and more effectively” category of SharePoint mobile apps and for that I am grateful.

However you should head this warning:

Don’t SharePoint While Walking!

There’s some scary facts laid out at this website, so be warned, whilsts Harmon.ie Mobile will significantly increase productivity and effectiveness whilst out of the office, it’s can also be dangerously addictive having real-time document info at your finger-tips.

Go and download it today and be productive while you play!

The agenda was awesome with roughly 70% business led case-studies and 30% “consultant and vendor” sessions.

The conference venue (Atlanta, Marriott Marquis) and all its 55 floors (I was on 33rd) was pretty awesome:

Room with a view

Hotel Bar

I loved the sail inspired bar (above) pretty stunning and the bar area had a great buzz pre and post conference with a great mix of attendees and the fabulous SHARE team all having a fantastic time.

Loved the “special touches” the event team did such as this awesome plate of cheese, crackers and an excellent bottle of white wine I found in my room after the 1st day!

Cheese and wine from the Share2012 folks

Another awesome and inspired touch came from the speakers briefing, where we got briefed on AV and timings etc and one by one we introduced ourselves including “what is your all time favourite song… I picked Otis Redding’s “[Sittin On] The Dock of the Bay”, you’ll find out why that’s significant a little later on in this post!

The first day was kind of a slow intro to conference life, I spent the morning going uptown to get gifts for wife & sister, a spot of Sushi with Jeremy Thake, then conference check-in and speaker briefing followed by some Free SharePoint Roundtables on a range of subjects. I sat in on Governance with Susan Hanley and then Adoption with Michael Sampson, they were pretty busy sessions, both were very interesting with quite disparate views and experience being shared.

One of the highlights of the evenings entertainment was going to the Vortex Bar & Grill and sampling the huge burger below, witnessing Richard Harbridge demolish (or was it the other way around) his triple bypass burger and drinking a “dirty hippy” (Guiness & SweetWater 420)

BURGERHarbridge Burger'd

The conference agenda was excellent and packed with great sessions and equally great speakers. Dux led a large portion of the “show” in his own inimitable style, including “impromptu” product demo’s megaphone, rapping and a plethora of other coolness!

Dux Keynote

Quote of the day must be:

“SharePoint Don’t Suck…. You Suck!”

The keynote sessions and the agenda for the day was packed, very varied and efficiently run and all the speakers did a fantastic job. None of the sessions I attended were a disappointment which can be rare occurrence at conferences!

The closing Keynote for the day was undeniably AWESOME. We were treated to a truly inspirational and emotional roller-coaster of a a session by Braam Malherbe, Endurance Athlete, Motivational Speaker, Environmentalist, Humanitarian, this guy and his colleague ran the entire length of the Great Wall of China, end to end, non-stop! If you get a chance to ever see him present take it… and take tissues… seriously I appreciate I was tired, it had been a long day but I was moved, very close to tears.

Inspirational

Following the emotional roller-coaster we went to Hard Rock Cafe Atlanta for some food, drink and dancing as well as the already internet-sensation of Dux’s “SharePoint’s Nice Nice Baby..”, lots of great conversations, beer, nibbles and some very very bad dancing!

Then we moved onto a 24 hour Karaoke bar! It all goes a little foggy then, but it was a great place, loads of people even before who knows how many SHARE2012 groovers arrived. So we finished the night in really bad voice, but really great form, everyone had an awesome time…

First Night Karaoke

This is the official SHARE T-Shirt, pretty damn awesome, I wear mine with pride all the time (good job I got two of them!)

My SHARE T-Shirt

Just before my session on Hybrid Organisations and SharePoint Online

Wednesday came and more great sessions scheduled as well as my session in the afternoon on Hybrid Organisations (or Anywhere Organisation as Microsoft now call it) and how SharePoint Online enables organisations to become more effective.

I got goosebumps and a huge grin when the track I said was my favourite at the speakers briefing, Otis Redding’s “[Sittin On] The Dock of the Bay” was played out LOUD in the room as I got on stage to do my session, great to have such personal touches at a large conference!

Although there wasn’t as many people in the session as I had hoped (I guess people didn’t “get” the title?), it was still a great experience presenting on the “international stage” and the conversations I had through the session were insightful and engaging.

Thursday came and it was time for me to run my all day workshop on gaining Effective SharePoint Requirements using Serious Games:

My Workshop

A Sample of Product Boxes

Innovation Games Group 2 wall

It was a great workshop, I think the two groups in the session got a great deal out of it, the conversations were fantastic, we had great fun and we came up with even more great ideas and concepts.

There was a definite sentiment that these techniques were very innovative, nothing people had experienced before and had the potential to make a huge difference to the requirements gathering process and SharePoint projects in general.

And then it was basically over…

I spent the evening watching some “important” (apparently) Ice-Hockey game in a proper sports bar with TV’s on robotic arms and beer pumps at every table with Jeremy and a few others with a couple of the SHARE team joining us later.

We finished the evening back in the hotel bar (the one with the sail) for more chilling, drinking, chatting, reminiscing and eating of Chocolate covered nacho’s… yep Chocolate covered nacho’s (with cherries and cream and ice-cream).

The Last Supper

So that was SHARE 2012 Atlanta, I had an awesome time, the angle of the conference was really interesting and I think it worked well, I have some feedback and ideas and everyone involved is collaborating with the fantastic SHARE team to make it even more awesome next time, wherever it’s run!

Back Story

Falklands Island Oil (FIO) were a specialist exploration company concentrating in the Antarctic with a vision for being environmentally neutral .  They found several 30Million barrel + fields during their exploration of that area and this allowed them to purchase Zenith Energy.  Zenith, the 6th largest oil company in the world, had the complete services ranging from exploration, tankering and customer products (Up-stream and Downstream) with operations and offices in Russia, Yellow Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Arctic, Africa and Middle East. The reason for the hostile takeover was that they had exaggerated their finds and upon independent assessment which adjusted the finds downwards the share price had fallen dramatically.  The rebranding of FIO and Zenith occurred when FIO called in Zebra Consulting (the same company which had the Ice Station incident in the early 1970’s) as they were getting different find values on the same exploration data. FIO and Zebra merged forming Fizz Energy retaining the second z as Zenith as part of the original good will agreement.

Falklands Island Oil (FIO)

• Focus on Antarctic exploration
• In 2010 discovered 30M+ barrel + fields
• Massive rise in SharePrice

Hostile takeover of Zenith Energy

• 6th Largest oil company in world
• Operations in Russia, Yellow sea, Gulf of Mexico, Artic, Africa and Middle East
• Recent share price crash due to over counting
• Zebra Consulting provided independent review

Merger

• FIO take over Zenith in 2011
• FIO and Zebra Consulting merged as part of deal
• Forming FIZZ Energy
• Retaining 2nd Z as part of Zenith agreement

FIZZ Energy 2011

• 5,000 employees
• Based on all continents
• Including oil rigs and tankers

FIZZ appoints new CIO

 Vision and Goals

To be the leading company in exploration, extraction, processing, storage and supply of energy through our innovation, agility, trust and responsibility.

For full details and to download the track refer check out the slide deck

At a recent 2 day workshop with a large UK central government department I drew this diagram to explain how we feel SharePoint Governance could be applied effectively in any organisation.

As you can see the diagram is split into three main areas:

1. Governance Documents
2. Governance Boards
3. “In-line” Governance

I suspect (actually I hope and pray) that the first two are familiar to you and you have to at least some level embedded in your organisation, but the third may be new to you and I’ll explain a little later in the post what I actually mean and how you can apply it.

The key for me is that in order for your SharePoint platform to be successful ongoing, at the intersection of any governance initiatives you apply there must be a shared vision.

This is a key philosophy that we at 21apps highlight in most of out consulting engagements and content.

But let me ask you:

“What are you doing to ensure your organisation has a Shared Vision?”

1. Governance Documents

We can’t get away with (not yet anyway) at some level having a governance document, hopefully your not still wordsmithing a huge tome that no-one else is going to read? Hopefully any governance document you have is written in “plain English”,  succinct and relevant? Maybe you’ve even been brave enough to publish it as some kind of wiki.

Whatever medium and format you choose to have any SharePoint governance documentation, please ensure that you apply continuous improvement principles to it. Most SharePoint solutions are emergent as in they evolve as people and organisations “learn”, adapt, evolve and pivot; your governance documentation must be in a format to evolve with these business and organisational shifts.

2. Governance Boards

It’s a phrase that (at least in the SharePoint world) should always be plural…

In our experience, one governance board is rarely effective, predominantly because we tend to by default, populate boards with “execs”. But the reality is that very few governance issues require exec / board / senior consideration, steer and approval.

Our recommendation is to set-up multiple governance boards in your organisation. As a minimum, two may well work for you:

1. Strategic Governance
2. Tactical Governance

This allows the BIG decisions to be taken appropriately, but also allows a more agile, tactical level of governance to be applied and support your SharePoint platform.

Depending on the size of your organisation and the strategic impact or importance of your SharePoint platform will influence whether you need further boards sandwiched between the two specified above. It is not uncommon for “big corps” to have 4 or more levels of governance boards!

A couple of rules of thumb for you:

1. Aim for “just enough” governance boards, don’t over complicate
2. Align board members to our “5 Pillars of SharePoint Governance” to ensure that you have the right mix and coverage of members
3. Members must be engaged, have a passion and interest and must have a shared understanding and commitment to both the Organisational and SharePoint Vision.

3. In-line Governance

So far I’m guessing most of what I have talked about is familiar at least to some level to you, this section I hope will offer some inspiration to change the way you implement SharePoint governance in your organisation…

I want to talk very briefly about three different ideas that can be used in what I call “in-line Governance”; as in ongoing, in the field, at the coal-face kind of techniques:

1. Governance Signposting
2. Centre of Excellence
3. SharePoint Tummeler.

Governance Signposting

This is a simple but very effective example of in-line governance where you provide the end-user with governance information and rationale in-place visually within the sites and content they are creating.

Yes it does potentially take up real-estate on the page but we’ve hopefully learnt that governance is extremely important, so the ROI must be clear?

Andrew did a great mock-up for one of our clients shown below, the example is showing site owners how SharePoint governance fits organisationally (Why) and how it is implemented:

As you can see for this example we have quite literally used a signpost and we are articulating the “why?” and “how?” for this piece of content.

Centre of Excellence (C of E)

We are starting to see the gradual emergence of SharePoint C of E’s, especially in big corps. This is a dedicated team that is represented on the governance boards, contributes to the governance documents and works pro-actively with both IT and the business to ensure SharePoint delivers clear business value and that user adoption is maintained.

Activities that the C of E may undertake include:

• Evangelism
• Training / Support
• Mentor
• Change Management
• Requirements gathering
• Business engagement / Stakeholder management
• Continuous development of the platform.

The size, shape and responsibilities of a SharePoint C of E will very much depend on the size and strategic importance of your SharePoint implementation; but one thing that is becoming very clear, whether its just a couple of dedicated people or a full on SharePoint-Army, the value a SharePoint Centre of Excellence can deliver is immense.

SharePoint Tummeler
You may be asking what the ?!*? is a “Tummeler”, well its described as follows:

“Tummel is a Yiddish word.
A tummeler is a person who catalyses others to action, traditionally hired at Jewish weddings to encourage everyone to dance. It originates from the German tummeln, which means ‘to stir’. “

The big challenge we see in a huge number of SharePoint implementations is that once live, the momentum, user adoption and value can very quickly bottom out without any ongoing stimulus, that is what a “SharePoint Tummeler” can provide either as part of the C of E discussed above or as an autonomous function; either way, “poking the box”, leading the way and evangelising by example is an extremely powerful function for ensuring ongoing business value from your investments.

Summary

I hope that whirlwind tour through three groups of techniques for applying SharePoint governance effectively in your organisation was of value to you and your organisation, the takeaways are:

1. Think of governance holistically
2. Ensure you have a shared vision
3. Apply governance as an embedded ongoing organisational activity
   (and yes we mean forever)

Additional Resources

To help you along the path to SharePoint Governance Nirvana, here’s a few resources that you may find of value:

Governance Services:
2 day Governance Kickstart (£2,400 + VAT & Expenses)

1 day Governance Healthcheck (£1,000 + VAT & Expenses)

2 day Private Workshop “Aligning SharePoint Governance to Improve Business Results” (£6,000 + VAT)

Blog Posts, Videos & Webcasts:
21apps & Innovative-e Webcast - ”The Evolution of SharePoint Governance”

The Missing Link in All SharePoint Projects

The 5 Pillars of SharePoint Governance Video

SharePoint Governance 3.0

And please feel free to get in touch with us directly to discuss your unique SharePoint Governance needs, we can help you with:

• SharePoint Tummeler
• Education
• Mentoring
• Consultancy
• Centre of Excellence development

Both myself and Andrew were really happy to be invited to speak at AvePoint’s first UK “Connect with the Expert’s – SharePoint Day” along with  David McMahon (talking about SharePoint Performance) and Mark Macrae (doing SharePoint Business Intelligence).

Over 50 people turned up, with an awesome mix of SharePoint backgrounds; the day was very well run and thanks to Microsoft UK for hosting and feeding us! As it was a “Connect with the Experts” day there was plenty of opportunities to carry on the conversations in the breaks and over lunch.

If you missed the event (shame on you!) or want to share with your colleagues what they missed (please, please do!), then below I have embedded both Andrew’s and my slides from the day, enjoy: