SharePoint Governance & Strategy

Whether you’re rolling out SharePoint company-wide or refining what’s already in place, this course helps you define roles, manage permissions, control content types, and create the framework your teams need to collaborate confidently and securely.

We’ll dive into the gritty detail of information architecture, document management, metadata, policies, site provisioning, adoption strategies and more - giving you a practical governance plan tailored to your organisation’s needs.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Build a SharePoint governance framework that reflects your organisation’s structure, goals and responsibilities.

• Define and implement document management, content types, metadata and information policies.

• Plan site provisioning, user permissions and long-term adoption strategies with confidence.

• Understand the balance between IT control, user empowerment, and risk mitigation in your SharePoint environment.

Who Is This Course For?

This course is ideal for:

• IT professionals, Power Users, and stakeholders responsible for SharePoint planning and oversight.

• Information Managers and Business Analysts looking to build effective structures for content, permissions and metadata.

• Project Managers or decision-makers tasked with designing or reviewing SharePoint rollouts across departments or organisations.

Prerequisites: A working knowledge of SharePoint is essential. Delegates should have attended the Everyday Users or Site Owners course (or have equivalent experience).

Course Outline

Governance Fundamentals

• What is governance, and why it matters in SharePoint

• Common governance pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Defining responsibilities: IT, business units, content owners

Strategic Planning & Architecture

• Understanding information architecture in SharePoint

• Mapping organisational structure to SharePoint site architecture

• Content types, metadata and taxonomy design

• Planning for site templates and provisioning workflows

Document & Information Management

• Implementing document management best practices

• Version control, approval workflows and retention policies

• Defining document libraries, naming conventions and templates

• Planning for records management in SharePoint

Permissions & Security

• Understanding SharePoint groups, permission levels, and inheritance

• Creating and maintaining permission strategies that scale

• Auditing access and controlling sensitive content

• Managing external sharing and guest access

Search, Navigation & Discoverability

• Planning site and hub navigation structures

• Designing metadata-driven search experiences

• Using filters, views, and tagging for content discovery

Governance in Practice

• Developing a SharePoint governance plan

• Building governance policies and documentation

• Scheduling governance reviews and audits

• Change management: balancing control and flexibility

User Adoption & Communication

• Driving user adoption with clarity and purpose

• Communicating roles, responsibilities and “how we use SharePoint”

• Training plans and onboarding strategies

• Encouraging consistency across departments and teams

Reflections & Planning

• Reflect on what’s working and where gaps exist in your current SharePoint setup

• Identify key takeaways to apply in your team or organisation

• Plan next steps for improving or starting your governance model