Tines Academy › Lesson
Plan governance for your org
A written plan lets teams build without waiting on you. Learn the five questions a governance plan has to answer, see how one company answered them, and draft a first plan for your own organization.
Objective: Draft a governance plan that answers the five governance questions, and identify which of its rules Tines 3B enforces and which rely on team agreement.
Write it down so everyone can build
By now, you've made a lot of decisions: how to check a workflow, what to watch, who gets access, how far a connector should reach, and when something's ready to go live. Right now, those decisions probably live in your head.
That works until you're on vacation, a new team wants to start building, or someone asks why they can't do something. A short, written plan makes your decisions repeatable, and it tells teams what they can do on their own without asking you first.
There's no single right governance model. A 50-person company and a 5,000-person company will make different choices, and both can be right. By the end of this lesson, you'll have a first draft of a plan that fits your organization.
Five questions a plan has to answer
A governance plan doesn't need to be long. It needs to answer five questions.
Where does work live? How spaces are organized, and who can create new ones.
Who can do what? Which groups get which roles, and who holds the tenant admin role.
How do teams reach other tools? Who creates connectors, who can use them, and how access is scoped.
What has to be true before something goes live? The readiness check, and who can push live.
Who's watching? Who checks monitoring, how often, and what happens when something needs attention.
Here's how a company with marketing, finance, and people operations teams answered those five questions. Use it as a worked example, not a template to copy.
Draft your plan
Open a doc or a note, and write a short answer to each of the five questions for your own organization. A few sentences each is plenty for a first draft. Base it on how your teams work today, not on how you wish they worked. If you don't know an answer yet, write down what you'd need to find out. That's still part of the plan.
If your organization is just getting started, one sensible order is to set things up as they depend on each other: people and sign-in first, then groups, then custom roles only if the built-in ones don't fit, then shared resources like connectors, and spaces after that. By the time you create a space, the people, groups, and connectors it needs already exist.
Copy these questions into your doc and answer each one in a sentence or two.
Where does work live?
How are spaces organized?
Who can create new spaces?
Who can do what?
Which groups get which roles, and in which spaces?
Who holds the tenant admin role?
How do teams reach other tools?
Who creates connectors, and how do they decide what each one can reach?
Who gets use access, and who keeps edit and share access?
What has to be true before something goes live?
What does the readiness check involve?
Who pushes live, and is that agreed or enforced?
Who's watching?
Who checks monitoring, and how often?
Which workflows need checking more often than that?
When something needs attention, who does what?
Still to find out
What don't you know yet, and who could tell you?
Test your plan against one change
Plans meet reality quickly. Pick one of these and think about what you'd need to change in your plan to handle it:
A new legal team starts building. Their workflows handle contracts, and they don't want their space discoverable to the rest of the company.
Leadership sets a budget for AI usage. Someone needs to notice before it's reached.
Your company turns on group synchronization with your identity provider. Group membership will be managed there from now on, and the matching controls in Tines 3B are locked.
Which of your five answers would have to change? Most changes touch more than one.
Find the gaps in your plan
Some words are a sign that an answer isn't finished yet. Read through your plan and look for these:
"Someone" or "whoever." Nobody owns it yet. Name a person or a role.
"Regularly," "as needed," or "when necessary." There's no rhythm yet. Say how often, or what sets it off. Be specific.
"Should." It's still an intention. Say who does it, and whether it's agreed or enforced.
"Everyone" or "full access." Check it against the job. Access should reach no further than the work needs.
Anything you still can't fill in goes under "Still to find out." That list is part of the plan: it tells you what to settle next.
What to do if something still feels fuzzy
A good governance plan answers five questions and lets teams build without waiting on you. Next, you'll put the whole course to work in four situations from a month of governance.