Hi Michelle, Darshan, Stacey, Debbie and others following this discussion,
Firstly, apologies for joining the conversation a little late. I've been following the discussion with interest and it's encouraging (and somewhat reassuring!) to see so many organisations asking the same questions.
In my experience, there is rarely a single "right" architecture for M365-most successful implementations end up balancing governance, usability, ownership, security and records management requirements.
One lesson we've learned is that organisations often spend a lot of time debating site structures, when the bigger challenge is establishing a clear operating model that both ICT and Information Management can support long term.
A few observations from working with organisations on this journey:
β’ Start with business functions rather than organisational structures wherever possible. Functions tend to remain more stable over time than departments and reporting lines.
β’ Avoid creating excessive site sprawl early. A simpler architecture with strong governance is often easier to scale than a highly granular design that becomes difficult for users to navigate.
β’ Separate collaboration needs from recordkeeping needs. Many organisations initially try to make every Teams workspace a perfect records repository, which can create unnecessary complexity.
β’ Clearly define ownership responsibilities from Day 1. Knowing who is responsible for site governance, access reviews, retention decisions and lifecycle management becomes critical as adoption grows.
β’ Focus heavily on user behaviour and adoption. The most elegant architecture on paper can struggle if staff don't understand where information belongs or why.
One thing I've noticed across councils, education and government organisations is that everyone seems to be solving very similar problems, often independently. There could be real value in a collaborative show-and-tell session where participants share architecture diagrams, lessons learned, what worked well, and perhaps more importantly, what they would do differently if starting again.
I'd be happy to facilitate a practical show-and-tell session and share examples from organisations across local government. We could walk through information architecture approaches, SharePoint and Teams design patterns, governance models, retention alignment, security considerations, and some of the lessons learned-both the successes and the mistakes worth avoiding. The intention would be to create an open discussion where everyone can compare approaches and learn from each other's experiences.
If this would be valuable, feel free to email me at sudi.mishra@monarch360.com.au. If there is enough interest, I'm happy to organise a Teams session for the group.
Kind regards,
Sudi Mishra
Monarch360
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Sudi Mishra
Monarch360 Pty Ltd
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