Grown from five to 25 people, when do shared drives become a problem
Around ten to fifteen people you see it: nobody finds anything, everyone forwards files, nobody owns any folder.
Try this first
- 1Inventory which shared drives exist today. Personal OneDrives with colleagues invited in, shared mailbox attachments, a 2018 NAS, and a SharePoint half the team cannot reach.
- 2Pick one place as the place. SharePoint document libraries or Google Shared Drives. Not OneDrive, because OneDrive is personal and files disappear when the owner leaves.
- 3Create a folder structure per team or project, not per person. Plus one central "General" for HR, contracts, and official documents. One level of order beats three levels of search.
- 4Set rights at folder level, not per file. And via groups ("Sales", "Operations") rather than per person, otherwise you are clicking through every onboarding by hand.
- 5Ban file attachments in internal mail. "Send the link" becomes the norm. Saves six versions of one file across six inboxes.
When to bring us in
Past 20 people you want governance too: retention, retention labels, audit logs, and one owner per top-level folder. We set that up without slowing anyone down.
See also
- First IT setup as a freelancer, what do you actually needNot everything at once. One laptop, a mailbox on your own domain, a password manager, a backup. That covers the first year.
- Hiring your first employee, what IT to arrange before day oneLaptop, account, mailbox, access to the right folders. In that order, not all of it at 9 a.m. on day one.
- Moving to a new office, IT checklistInternet and power have the longest lead times. Plan at least three months out, not three weeks.
None of the above fits?
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