Your Governance Committee should consist of no more than 12 people and no fewer than 7.  It is often the case that as a committee grows in size it loses the speed with which it can make decisions. A governance committee that’s too small is less representative of the community of users and may make decisions that are not in line with SharePoint’s actual business uses.  A governance committee that’s too large is often subject to political agendas and infighting.  While there is no ‘right’ number of governance members to serve on your governance committee, realize that this committee’s success has more to do with personalities and corporate culture than it does the number of participants.

It is also recommended that you have at least 2 backup members that you can ask to participate in the event that some find involvement in the committee to be too time consuming.

I’m on-site with a client this week and I’m staying in a swanky hotel that I really enjoy.  While I enjoy the accommodations, the fantastic food and the incredible desserts (their chocolate mousse cake will likely be my official cause of death!), I absolutely DO NOT enjoy their horrible wi-fi signal. 

Earlier this evening I received an e-mail from a co-worker with some items that are ready for my review.  Being the good SharePoint Soldier that I am, I connected to our SharePoint environment to check them out of our SharePoint site to work on them locally.  Checking them out of the library proved a little more painful that I anticipated, however.  My system began to download the documents and I waited, and waited and waited some more for the files to process.  After about 45 minutes of waiting around and watching some really bad television program, I went into the document library and looked at the size of these files.  Well, they turned out to be 90 meg in size…each.  On a hotel wi-fi signal that’s lower than Sarah Palin’s approval rating, I don’t anticipate being able to work on these files until sometime tomorrow morning.

So here’s my SharePoint recommendation for you:

A lot of organizations selling the use of SharePoint to their organizations tout the ability for remote workers to be able to more easily access corporate documents, regardless of whether they are working from home or from the road.  It’s true, SharePoint is an excellent, easy-to-use document management system.  However, wouldn’t it be better if we helped out our remote friends by ensuring that we place the the ‘File Size’ column in the document library view so they can anticipate the wait they are in for when they begin to download documents locally?  Something so easy, so simple that makes such a big difference when it comes to user satisfaction.

Include both management personnel as well as individual contributors on your SharePoint governance committee. This will aid in the decision making processes by providing deeper, more relevant context to the discussions.

From the management personnel, a higher level, strategic view of the business will be represented, which will serve to inform where the business is going, some of the elements that it is hoped that SharePoint will address and the path that is planned to move the organization to the next level.

From the individual contributors will come a focus on the practical application of the technology and how the user community will actually integrate SharePoint into their daily work.  When I work with organizations I often try to spend most of my time with the individual contributors, the people that focus on where the rubber meets the road.  These are the people that are planning and executing the vision set forward by management.  SharePoint is very much a ‘hands on’ technology that flourishes when stretched and molded.  It often takes the worker community a little longer to get SharePoint configured exactly the way that they want it, but once it is, beautiful things happen.

The membership of your SharePoint Governance committee should reflect the diversity of business functions within the organization as well as the diversity of opinions users have regarding the use of technology.  The governance committee should contain representatives that are pro-SharePoint as well as those that have some skepticism regarding SharePoint’s usefulness. This will ensure that a healthy debate of opinions occurs which will enhance the robustness of the governance solution outcome. 

Choosing governance committee members that are all PRO SharePoint will feel right for 5 months or so but will hurt you in the long run.  If the committee doesn’t have any members that approach SharePoint, and collaboration’s usefulness within your company, with skepticism, you will miss widespread adoption and will diminish your reputation within the organization.