Sharepoint Taxonomy and Structure

Many people have asked me how to implement a taxonomy plan for a SharePoint site. The key really lies in how the team will be using the information. How many lists or libraries should you have? How many subsites should you have? Historically, companies have been function-centric entities, where everyone in Human Resources shared certain information, everyone in Sales shared other information, and so on. But one thing to consider is how much of this HR information is available to the Sales department, or even to the company as a whole, and vice versa. As an alternative to function-centric, companies may be aligned more by geographic location, or by product, etc. This will be the driving factor in the initial taxonomy plan. How is information shared and disseminated? As you answer these questions, you must always keep security and permissions access in the back of your mind. Fortunately, SharePoint 2007 offers a very flexible system in which to enable access to certain people or groups of people.