Start with three top-level spaces, not twenty
Top-level spaces answer 'whose material is this', not 'what kind of content is it'. Split by team (product / engineering / ops) and push content types (docs, tables, boards) to the second level. This one rule keeps the tree usable for three years.
Naming conventions beat templates
Templates give you structure; they do not stop one thing having two names. Agree on prefixes (SPEC- / MTG- / DOC-) and a date format first, then let people improvise.
Build views by role, not by content
Product wants a timeline, engineering wants a status board, the boss wants a rollup — over one dataset. Views built by content give you five copies of the same rows.
Permissions by inheritance, not per-page sharing
Per-page sharing survives up to about 20 people; past that it breaks down. Use space-level permissions plus a short list of exceptions.
Run an empty-space drill before inviting anyone
Have one person walk a real task: find a doc, file a request, change a status. Wherever they get stuck is where the process has not been designed yet.
Automate the weekly report
Generate it from a database view plus a scheduled reminder instead of asking people to write it by hand. Three months in, this is the highest-return step on the list.
Keep a sandbox
Let the team try things there and clean it out on a schedule. Without a sandbox everyone experiments in the main tree, and then nobody dares delete anything.
Tools in this playbook
Based on a real rollout; product behaviour reflects the version at publication. Tell us if something has changed.