Success or failure

SharePoint environments are extremely complex systems that require constant monitoring, planning, and maintenance; you cannot just deploy a farm and hope to have a stable, secure collaboration platform. This is why having a solid and well thought out governance plan is crucial. But the reality is that most organizations either don't have a proper governance plan or don't have one at all.

One of the main causes of system failure is when processes and procedures are weak, this usually happens when the people who are responsible for creating, implementing, and tweaking the processes and procedures (usually the governance board) are not monitoring and reviewing the processes and procedures continually to keep them up-to-date, and the administrators are not testing on a regular basis and reporting back to the governance board informing them of the issues that were found with the processes and procedures while testing. So what usually happens is that the administrators start coming up with quick fixes and workarounds to keep things going in the short term but sooner or later, they will get tired, frustrated, or they'll leave before things really go wrong. Then, it is too late to prevent the catastrophe that has been brewing.

So management must understand that they need enough staff on the ground not just to keep things up and running but to maintain a healthy and stable environment, they need to have a well thought out governance plan. Staff on the ground must report situations that will lead to system failure and data loss to management immediately.

Is failure necessary for success? I think that processes and procedures must be tested and improved continuously, testing is how you will find weaknesses and flaws in your processes and procedures that you may not find in the midst of a system failure. This is the main reason for governance, people taking ownership of change and reacting to it constructively. So the answer is yes, failure is necessary for success, but if you are testing regularly these failures will happen in a controlled environment.