Stop Treating SharePoint Like a Storage Unit
I hope you are enjoying this blog series, because I’m sure having fun writing it! I hope those of you who are new to my content are getting to know me. I’m a storyteller. I’ve been told my “super power” is my use of analogies that help humans understand their tech. This is one I’ve been working on for a while and I’m excited to share it with you.
The Next Step: Building Your SharePoint Dream Home
We’ve spent the last stretch of this series building up to where we are today. We’ve covered:
- What Goes Where (OneDrive vs SharePoint vs Teams)
- What Goes Where…When (Authoring, Publishing and Retention)
Now it’s time to take what we know and put it into action to build a user-friendly, easily accessible space for people to FIND THEIR STUFF.
Back in the day there was a hilarious comedian named George Carlin who did a whole bit about having more and more STUFF. If you haven’t seen it, go look it up and prepare to laugh and probably relate. Every time I teach this, I hear his voice in my head. And giggle.
In this next series of posts we are going to focus on our Communication Sites.
The publishing layer.
(SPOILER…everything applies to Collaboration sites too.)
Sooo…Where Do We Start?
Hopefully you’ve ready the posts leading up to this one and are familiar with the concepts of managing your content.
Now we get to the fun part.
At least it always is for me. This is the moment SharePoint officially becomes a grown adult, signs the dead, and is ready to build its first home. Not on random land that was thrown at them in a last-minute decision to figure out where to store our STUFF, but in a brand-new neighborhood where things actually make sense.
Picture a brand-new neighborhood going up on the edge of town. Right now it’s all potential: open land, fresh streets, and that big promise hanging in the air… “Your dream home starts here.”
Welcome to the Neighborhood: Why Infrastructure Comes First
Before any homeowner starts picking backsplash tile or arguing about paint samples, there’s a developer behind the scenes doing the unglamorous, essential work. They make sure the land is buildable. The roads connect. The water runs. The lights turn on. The mailbox actually exists.
In your organization the Information Technology Team is the “Developer”.
Without that groundwork, every “dream home” becomes a money pit nightmare with sink holes popping up well after the structures have been built.
IT Is the Developer (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
They’re responsible for getting the SharePoint neighborhood ready for people to move in and build. That includes the infrastructure nobody wants to think about until it’s missing:
- The right SharePoint architecture and guardrails
- Security and access models that make sense
- Storage, governance, lifecycle, and compliance expectations
- Standards that keep the environment scalable instead of chaotic
In other words, IT isn’t building everyone’s house. They’re building the neighborhood. And in most cases, it’s a gated neighborhood to ensure the security of everyone living within the walls and their stuff is safe.
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The HOA Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Needs)
Every good development has an HOA. Not because someone loves rules… but because without standards, the neighborhood gets weird fast.
One yard has six-foot weeds. Another house has six different mailbox styles. Somebody parks a boat in the driveway permanently (ahem…my cousin Tim). One homeowner builds a “temporary shed” that becomes a forever shed. Suddenly, the whole place feels less like a community and more like an accident.
In SharePoint, the HOA is your governance standards:
- Naming conventions and site request processes
- Theme and branding expectations
- Navigation standards
- What belongs where (and what absolutely does not)
- Rules around sharing, retention, and ownership
The goal isn’t to restrict people. The goal is to make sure the neighborhood stays functional, findable, secure, and… frankly… livable.
Homeowners Build the Dream, Not the Infrastructure
Once the neighborhood is ready, each team becomes the homeowner. They get to design their space around their work, their audience, and their goals, within the standards that keep everything cohesive.
This is where SharePoint gets fun.
Because when you give people a well-designed “lot” with utilities already running, they can focus on what actually matters:
- Creating a site that people want to use
- Organizing content so it’s easy to find and trust
- Building pages that help employees get things done
- Designing a space that reflects the team’s purpose
And here’s the part that matters most: this isn’t just about building something pretty. It’s about building something that works, and continues to work six months from now when the original site owner changes roles and someone new inherits the keys.
Let’s Go on a Journey…
Over the next series of posts, we’re going to walk through what it takes to plan and build your SharePoint Dream Home, step by step, like a smart homeowner who wants a beautiful space and a house that won’t fall apart in the first big storm.
We’ll talk about:
- How to plan your “floor plan” before you touch a web part
- How to structure content so your site doesn’t turn into a junk drawer
- How to design pages that guide people instead of overwhelming them
- How to keep your site clean, current, and trusted over time
Because the best SharePoint environments don’t happen by accident. They happen when IT builds a strong development, and work teams build thoughtful homes inside it.
So… if your SharePoint ecosystem currently feels like a neighborhood where every house was built by a different contractor with a different set of blueprints and a different understanding of the word “standards”… you’re in the right place.
Up Next...
Stay tuned for our next post in the series where we dive into your audience. Who is your site actually for? Because every dream home starts with one question: who’s going to live here?
How Can I Help?
If any of this sounds familiar, let’s fix it together. I help organizations turn “we have SharePoint” into “we have a neighborhood that works” by defining clear governance (the HOA rules), building a usable information architecture (the street map), and creating learning experiences that help people actually adopt the plan instead of working around it. If you’re ready to stop hoarding and start building, reach out and let’s talk about what a SharePoint Dream Home looks like in your world.