Thanks for your comment (and for your support).

My example is (a bit) exaggerated for the purposes of making a point. But, I have seen deployments where sites were VERY strictly controlled, leaving users with very little power to make the site useful and usable for their needs. (I think you’d be surprised.)

The other thing that I want to emphasize: The “Necessary” part of NBNS. It is very important to have systems in-place to ensure uptime, performance, disaster recovery and well-written code. Many of the elements of governance plans are very important. It is how these elements are arrived at (and how ‘best practices’ are selected and implemented) that we are addressing with our approach to Shared Understanding & Shared Commitment.

-Ruven

I agree with the necessary but not sufficient stuff outlined here as well and anyone who has the opportunity to go to that workshop should DO IT.

However I did find one part a bit confusing and want to make sure I don’t have the wrong ideas when it comes to Governance for SharePoint. It has to do with this line in the analogy: Let’s limit training and support costs == You can only dial these six numbers (Huh!?!)

Realistically I have not seen or been involved in a Governance implementation that only does the ‘6 numbers’ approach. What I mean by this is that typically you want to define templates/structure to help give a ‘6 most common’ or ‘6 suggested’ numbers and then if those don’t fit the need allow/notify the user that they can escalate it to another level of support where a business analyst or someone like that would evaluate the needs.

Would the above be sufficient? Or (without giving away the tasty material from your workshop) would it not be sufficient?

Thank you,
Richard Harbridge