Well, this is my last working day for 2008, looking forward to a serious break over Christmas. Thanks to everyone I've had a chance to work with, chat with, learn from, or generally hang out with. It's been a busy but stimulating year, and I'm proud of what we've managed ...
Monthly Archives: December 2008
December 18, 2008
Publicising the launch of ‘Boris’ at City of Casey
Step Two Designs has written before about the benefits of naming an intranet. It's something many teams consider, especially when launching or relaunching a site. Questions abound on the idea: Will the name be inanimate, functional, industrial, emotive or something with personality? If relaunching the intranet, is the existing name still ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: branding, case studies, Intranets, marketing
December 18, 2008
Who owns intranet search?
To make intranet search successful, the right technology must be put in place, and the necessary work undertaken to design and configure its operation. Once these practical steps have been completed, the next key issue is to resolve who 'owns' search on the intranet. In other words, who has the responsibility ...
Categorised under: Intranets, James' articles, Search tools
December 18, 2008
Two types of CMS users
Content management systems are frequently rolled out widely across whole organisations, following a 'decentralised authoring' model. As discussed in the earlier article The importance of CMS usability, a new CMS product will only be a success if staff make use of it. For this to happen, authors must be able ...
Categorised under: Content management, James' articles
December 17, 2008
User/stakeholder maps for intranets
Patrick C Walsh has posted on his use of user/stakeholder maps for intranets. To quote: I have found it useful, especially when changing things , to try and keep the users and stakeholders of my intranet in the forefront of my mind. I manage this by using an approach ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
December 16, 2008
Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009
Ross Dawson of the Future Exploration Network organises truly excellent events, and the next one will be the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009, to be held in Sydney on 24 February. To quote: The Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum is a deeply practical day for executives who want to harness social ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Enterprise 2.0
December 16, 2008
Delivering Innovative Intranets (London, March 2009)
As part of my European trip coming up in March, I'll now be running a one-day intranet masterclass in London, on Tuesday March 12th. To quote: General consensus is growing: Intranets must succeed. While they have grown greatly over the last ten years, too many intranets deliver just corporate documents ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
December 15, 2008
How to manage an intranet
Gerry McGovern has just reignited the debate on the "time saving" metric for intranets. To quote: Let’s say that Organization A has 30,000 employees. Let’s say each employee does a particular task on average 50 times a year. Let’s say it takes 10 minutes longer than it should because it’s ...
Categorised under: Intranets, Metrics & ROI
Tags: business case, Intranets, metrics, roi
December 15, 2008
Book review: Seamless Teamwork
Seamless TeamworkMichael Sampson Team-based collaboration is now a key part of project delivery in many organisations. Despite this, success can be hit-and-miss, with some teams prospering and others not. Tools such as SharePoint are spreading rapidly through organisations. While these can bring significant new capabilities, they are not simple tools, ...
Categorised under: Book & product reviews
Tags: Collaboration
December 10, 2008
IntraTeam Event 2009 (Denmark, March 2009)
I'm pleased to be returning to Denmark again in March, to present at the IntraTeam Event 2009 conference, to be held in Copenhagen on 3-5 March 2009. I was one of the keynote speakers last year, and this was a great event. 200+ intranet team members in the one room, ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
December 9, 2008
Don’t put the weather on the intranet homepage
A common enhancement to intranets is to add some sort of weather information to the homepage. This could be an icon showing the current temperature, through to a full 5-day forecast showing projected temperatures, rainfall and humidity. What is surprising is how ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
December 5, 2008
4 common themes from intranet reviews
Alex Manchester writes about 4 common themes from intranet reviews that he has been conducting recently. To quote: The findability of information has perhaps been the biggest challenge worked on to date, especially in the two projects I'm working on closely. The typical situation includes lots of systems, knowledge bases ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets, needs analysis
December 5, 2008
You don’t need an ECM strategy
Janus Boye has written a post arguing that you don’t need an ECM strategy. To quote: Over the last years, I’ve heard consultants, analysts, experts, gurus and even some vendors preach that strategy is the vital ingredient that’s too often missing in many organisations. For ECM projects, I certainly agree ...
Categorised under: Information management
December 4, 2008
What does intranet innovation mean?
Today in Melbourne is the last of this year's Intranet Innovation Awards roadshow sessions. Running these has helped me to refine my thinking about what innovation really means, and how to put it into practice on our intranets. These are the key messages I've been highlighting at the sessions: Steal good ...
Categorised under: Intranets
December 4, 2008
Exploring new techniques
It's great when we get a chance to try out some new techniques in our client work. Two examples at the moment: We are starting into the user research for an intranet project within a major international brand. With offices throughout S-E Asia (and beyond), we can't conduct staff interviews in ...
Categorised under: Intranets, Usability & user-centered design
December 4, 2008
Worst practices for managing wikis in organizations
The Wikis in Organizations team has written a post on a few wiki worst practices. To quote: Instead of doing what others do best, try avoiding what others do worst. It is much more harder to follow best practices than to stay away from worst practices. With respect to managing ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Intranets
Tags: wikis
December 4, 2008
Should you throw out the CMS or just the implementation?
The CMS Myth asks: should you throw out the CMS or just the implementation? To quote: Most organizations we talk to are often looking at their second or third CMS implementation, so by no means are they strangers to the promise of web content management. But almost half the ...
Categorised under: Content management
December 3, 2008
Building a CMS from scratch is so 1990s
Paul Chin argues against writing your own CMS. To quote: I was recently asked something that I myself have been wondering for a while: Does anyone still build intranet-based content management systems (CMS) from scratch? And more importantly, is there any real advantage in doing so?
Categorised under: Content management
December 2, 2008
Do automated review dates work?
Keeping content up to date is hard. Whether on a website or intranet, organisations constantly battle with outdated or incorrect information. One of the primary goals of a content management system (CMS) project is therefore to improve the quality of content on the site (or sites). One of the key mechanisms ...
Categorised under: Content management
December 1, 2008
Stop calling it usability testing
Patrick Kennedy writes about the confusion surrounding usability testing. To quote: The term “usability testing” often gets misconstrued by technical types, project managers and business analysts. It gets turned into a stale, rigid, bureaucratic affair. The old “unit, integration, system” mantra. It’s done as a matter of course, at the ...
Categorised under: Usability & user-centered design
Tags: usability, usability testing
