Intranet Advent Day 17 – Governance checklist

We’re counting down to Christmas with a stocking-filler tip every day.

Following a guiding star is useful, but sometimes intranets need a bit more direction. Good intranet governance ensures the intranet operates in the way intended by the business. Do your governance processes need a tune up?

Your governance doesn’t need to be a massive tome – it can be a set of guiding principles, helping site owners, contributors, and end-users know what they can do online.

There are some technical governance issues that need to be hammered out right from the start though, and of course your governance needs to directly support your intranet strategy and business strategy.

The great thing about governance is that it lays out the decision making process and the criteria for making changes.

We’ve put together a Governance checklist [Word; 1.1MB].

Think of it like a table of contents for the governance section of your intranet.

Depending on the overall purpose of your intranet, you may find that your governance naturally focuses on content lifecycles, communication (internal comms, and social network), people’s permissions, access, and capabilities, or business process support.

Beyond the complexities of running an intranet, my one piece of governance advice is to understand when to encourage the creation of new team sites / community spaces. I see too many out-dated and abandoned intranet sections that were obviously started with enthusiasm but without a strong purpose.

Tune up your #intranet governance in the new year with our checklist: http://t.co/Vwt9am0pJM #intranetadvent

— ClearBox Consulting (@ClearBoxTeam) December 17, 2014

Check #intranetadvent for a fresh idea each day.