When Microsoft Teams was released, organizations saw tighter controls as a barrier to collaboration. Unfortunately, many organizations are dealing with Teams “sprawl” and are wondering how to regain control.
The world’s shift to remote work in 2020 demonstrated that the right tools and workplace culture could keep organizations productive and collaborating, no matter where their employees may be working from.
Kiefer Consulting was an early adopter of Microsoft Teams, and we immediately recognized similarities between the collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Teams and SharePoint Team Sites. We went to work on a governance plan for Teams and established policies for team provisioning and lifecycle management. We expressed the need for governance in all our Microsoft Teams engagements and helped many clients build a governance plan that kept teams productive, but also pro-actively controlled Teams “sprawl” and improved the user experience.
Microsoft Teams is built on SharePoint and is a robust and unified communications platform that is built for the modern workplace. Teams features chat, the ability to conduct video meetings, file storage, and the ability to integrate with other applications. Teams seamlessly integrates with other applications in Microsoft 365 products and can integrate with many non-Microsoft services. Many users spend most of their time in Teams. We have discovered that Teams is built for the remote worker, offering the ability to use “one door” to all the capabilities of Microsoft 365.
Governance and policy setting is important. Turning on Teams without a plan can result in Teams “sprawl”. It is important to control how Teams are provisioned, whether or not the collaboration space should be a Team site or a “channel” and it is important to manage the lifecycle of Teams. An organization can easily become overwhelmed by the number of Teams sites and the corresponding SharePoint sites, that are created every time a Team is created. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
Defining a governance approach
Files in Teams. Are they in SharePoint?
How long will you need a Team?
Team or SharePoint Collaboration Site?
Site Templates: A better way to collaborate
Standardizing your Microsoft 365 toolset
Collaboration and governance go hand in hand. Kiefer can help you in developing an enterprise collaboration strategy for your organization. We can help you in choosing the right tools and building a culture of collaboration. Contact us to learn more or talk to the experts.