☕ SharePoint Tip #17 — Governance Frameworks: keeping SharePoint under control
Good morning! Here is your 15-minute SharePoint tip for today.
Day 17 | Week 4 — Product Owner Mastery
SharePoint Governance Frameworks
Governance is what separates a well-run SharePoint environment from one that becomes an unmanageable mess within 18 months. As Product Owner, governance is one of your most important responsibilities.
What governance covers
- Who can create sites (and what kind)
- How sites are named
- What templates are used
- Who owns each site and what their responsibilities are
- How long content is kept
- How external sharing is controlled
- What happens to abandoned sites
Site provisioning: controlled vs self-service
Self-service — any user can create a Team or SharePoint site. Fast, but leads to sprawl: hundreds of sites with inconsistent names, no owners, and duplicate content within months.
Controlled provisioning — users request a site via a form (often a Power Apps/SharePoint List). An automated approval flow creates the site using a pre-configured template with the right settings. Slower to set up but far easier to govern long-term.
Most mature organisations use controlled provisioning with a lightweight approval process (same-day turnaround).
Naming conventions
Define these before your first site is created — they’re almost impossible to change retroactively:
| Element | Example convention |
|---|---|
| Team sites | dept-teamname (e.g. hr-recruitment) |
| Project sites | proj-projectname-year (e.g. proj-crmlaunch-2025) |
| Communication sites | comms-purposename (e.g. comms-it-intranet) |
Site lifecycle management
Every site should have:
- A named primary owner (not a generic IT account)
- A secondary owner (for when the primary leaves)
- A defined review date (annually)
Use Microsoft 365 inactive site policies to automatically detect sites with no activity in 6 months and email the owner to confirm the site is still needed.
Try it today (5 minutes)
Go to the SharePoint Admin Center → Active sites. Filter by "Last activity" to find sites with no activity in the last 90 days. How many are there? Who owns them? This exercise reveals governance debt — and gives you immediate, tangible work to put in your backlog.
As a Product Owner
Write your governance policy as a living document, not a one-time project. Review it quarterly. Every new Microsoft feature release (Copilot, Syntex, Loop) may require a governance update. Governance is a product, not a project.
See you tomorrow at 6:00 AM with Tip #18 — Writing SharePoint User Stories!