This document introduces governance as an essential part of a successful Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 deployment. Governance includes policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes to guide how organizations achieve business goals. A comprehensive governance plan can help protect from security threats, provide consistent branding, improve performance, and define what can be deployed. Governance should cover information architecture, IT services, branding, and training. The roles, people, processes, and policies for backup/restore, health monitoring, site creation, metadata management, and branding are outlined.