5 Critical Steps to SharePoint Information Architecture Planning

Steve Pogrebivsky has a nice article out on 5 critical steps to SharePoint architecture planning.  I like his general take on it because you mention governance in the SharePoint world and before you know it you are down in the weeds defining all sorts of collections, metadata, content definitions and the like.  It’s a different world than other portal projects actually. (Mark Polly blogged on the difference a while ago)

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So what do I like about Steve’s approach?  He focuses on the people and the needs first before diving into techno geek details. It’s about:

1. Understanding the current landscape of document, content, IA and culture
2. Know what players need to be involved
3. Understand how content flows across your organization
4. Have a plan to get started
5. Plan for change and it won’t happen overnight

Steve’s best quote: (emphasis added)

Often the hardest part of defining a SharePoint information architecture is really understanding what you have now and how to change that. That understanding is a mix of knowing what and where the information is, along with who needs access to it, but also understanding the everyday knowledge worker who is using that information and will be using your new environment. Making management happy should be a by-product of making your key workforce more efficient and productive. A well-defined SharePoint Information Architecture will get you on your way.

But of course, go to the entire article on CMSWire to get a lot more detail, I just hit the really high level talking points.