Uniformity ≠ Good Governance

A current customer is focused on asserting a standardized folder structure (down to level 3) for administrative and operational files.  When I asked them why they are doing this the justification was that this was their new governance model.

But, does uniformity equal good governance?

No, it does not.  If the structure of your folder taxonomy supports the application of security rules, retention rules, and the application of metadata that can be used to easily find documents, good governance is achieved.  Each group within an organization could do this in a different way using different structures and if the content is secure, easily dispositioned, and searchable the requirement is met.

Too often, we see deployments fail where this standardization mistake is made.  Users don’t understand the new structures and don’t want to use them.  That is a failed ECM implementation.  To encourage use, we want the structure that is presented to be familiar.  We have enough challenges overcoming the resistance to change we so often face when moving folks from their file system to an ECM system. 

Why create more problems?

Instead of wasting cycles on reorganizing things that could be easily left alone, leave it alone.  Unless, of course, your objective is to burn consulting hours inventing new taxonomies.  I guess there’s that.