Managing a single website is different from managing several websites. Uncomplicated decisions with a single website can become hopelessly complicated when the overlapping and conflicting needs of various website properties are managed as a group. As a result, organizations have chosen to standardize their digital properties on a common platform, but struggle with the process of designing and building the platform to meet their needs, migrating disparate properties to the platform, and maintaining the platform after the build completion.
Platform governance can help speed the development of your platform, streamline its management, and ensure its success after launch. Acquia defines governance as a decision-making framework enabling an organization to assign ownership, set priorities, and define shared guidelines, standards, and processes for all platform users.
Note
For more governance information specific to Site Factory, see Governance on Site Factory.
Properly implemented, platform governance can provide the following benefits to your organization:
In the series, we discuss the types of governance your properties may need, governance implementation, and how to use governance to architect, build, migrate to, and maintain the platform to meet your organization’s unique needs.
Organizations with insufficient or ineffective platform governance over their online properties can see various problems develop in their online presence, ranging from organizational challenges, delivery challenges, and user experience challenges.
Enterprise-wide initiatives and goals are often unclear in organizations without enough governance. Situations without appropriate governance create difficulties for employees and teams to work together, causing an unequal allocation of available resources. There may not be a clear definition of roles or responsibilities across the enterprise, nor visibility into what digital solutions exist to improve how teams work together.
In organizations without appropriate governance, a lack of mature delivery processes can lead to development teams inconsistently or inefficiently delivering projects. Solutions chosen may be too inflexible to meet the needs of different brands or markets. Since teams look busy, and every issue gets top priority, measuring work or goals becomes difficult.
Organizations lacking governance see internal problems begin to affect their end users. A lack of governance can lead to inconsistent branding experiences, including different messaging across different touch points in the customer journey, making a more difficult experience for users to connect to your brand.
Avoiding some of the most common mistakes and misperceptions of platform building will increase the likelihood of your project’s success. Some of the possible mistakes include the following:
Establishing an effective governance model requires you to understand and document key aspects of your business and operations, including the following:
Your governance policy should provide clear guidance on all aspects of building, maintaining, and expanding your platform. Although no two governance policies are the same, some common topics in governance policies include, but are not limited to the following:
On the next page in the governance series, you’ll learn more about the Types of governance needed in your platform.