Articles by Month: November 2005

Intranet Planning Day (Canberra, 5 April 2006)

The corporate intranet must be more than just a "dumping ground for second hand documents". Instead, it should be a valuable business tool that delivers tangible and visible benefits for the organisation as a whole.

This intranet planning day is designed to give you an opportunity to focus on intranet strategy, and the activities needed to deliver a truly successful intranet. Current directions will be challenged, and new approaches explored.

This workshop is particularly focused on managers of existing intranets, and it is designed to give a new perspective on future directions for the intranet, as well as ways of better managing it on a day-to-day basis.

The first of these events has been organised for 2006, to be held in Canberra on 5 April 2006.

Full event details

Posted by jamesr at 03:53 PM | Permalink
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Improving intranet search (free, Canberra, 22 February 2006)

As part of our ongoing efforts to bring intranet teams from different organisations together, Step Two Designs will be presenting a free afternoon session on improving intranet search, to be held in Canberra on 22 February 2006.

Topics covered in the afternoon session include:

• best-practice design of search and result pages
• simple versus advanced search
• synonyms, taxonomies, and 'best bets'
• search engine usage reports
• tuning search engine configuration
• selecting appropriate search tools

The last of these events was run in Sydney in August, and there was a real buzz, with about 80 attendees on the day, from a wide range of organisations. Numbers are strictly limited, and all participants must register in advance (walk-ins on the day will not be admitted).

Full event details

(Note that this is a strictly vendor-neutral event, and there is no third-party sponsorship, presentations or displays.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:25 PM | Permalink
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Managing key information

When planning an information management strategy, there can be an overwhelming volume of documents and other content to address.

Within even a single business unit of a typical organisation, thousands of documents are created in a given year. While it would be desirable to have all of these managed to the same high level, this is clearly impractical. In practice, however, there are certain types of documents that need to be managed more tightly, while others can be ignored (at least in the short term).

This briefing identifies some key categories of documents that should be targeted as part of information management projects, and discusses a number of practical approaches that can be taken.

Identifying key information

While thousands of documents are created within an organisation, many of these do not warrant close attention as part of an information management (or document management) project. Instead, our experience in organisations has shown that there are three main categories of key information within many organisations.

[CM Briefing 2005-22, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 12:45 PM | Permalink
Categories: Area Health Service project, Book & product reviews, Conferences & presentations, Content management, Design & usability guidelines, Document & records management, E-learning, Information architecture, Information management, Information management, Interface design, Intranets, James' articles, James' articles, Knowledge management, Metrics & ROI, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design, Web development, Weblogs, XML

Good search is knowledge management

One of the key goals of knowledge management is to ensure that staff have the information they need, at the time they need it. What has often been overlooked is that effective search can play a key role in meeting this need, beyond just allowing staff to 'find stuff'.

Implementing a good search solution can help knowledge managers build their understanding of staff needs, can raise the visibility of key information, and can help staff to better understand what they are looking for. These uses will be explored in this briefing, with the overall goal of prompting knowledge (and information) managers to take a second look at search.

Mundane search

Search is often implemented as a 'second thought' within organisations. First the intranet or document management system is installed, and then search is added to help users 'find stuff' within the growing repository of information.

In many cases, search is deployed out of the box, with little (or no) extra effort put into customising or improving its effectiveness. Worse, no attention is given to the search on a month-by-month basis. This 'mundane' search provides only modest value to the organisation. Worse, poor search can be a major cause of staff frustration.

[CM Briefing 2005-21, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 12:31 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles, Knowledge management, Search tools

The "all together" rule for intranets

The primary purpose of intranets is to support staff in doing their jobs, to help them complete common business tasks. In practice, however, this can be very frustrating on many intranets. Policies are located in one section, procedures in another section, and forms in a third. Information then needs to be hunted out in order to complete even simple activities.

The effectiveness of intranets can be greatly enhanced by bringing together all of the information and tools relating to a task or a subject, and presenting them in a single location. This is the basis for the "all together" rule for intranets: aggregate content together, to help staff to find required information, and to complete key business tasks.

This article explores some of the issues currently experienced on intranets, and discusses alternative models that can be put into practice.

Evolving intranets

Intranets have evolved in an organic way over time, with content published by many different areas of the organisation. This naturally leads to intranets becoming structured along organisational lines, with each business unit maintaining a separate intranet section or sub-site.

[December KM Column, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 12:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets, James' articles

Top 5 killer intranet mistakes

Toby Ward has written a blog entry listing top 5 killer intranet mistakes. To quote:

A killer mistake doesn't mean that the intranet dies, and shuts down -- that simply doesn't (commonly) happen. A killer mistake is strategic in nature; a strategic error that prevents the intranet from moving forward, halted by inertia or a state of purgatory. This purgatorical state is a broken state where the intranet can no longer progress in its current form without a complete restructuring -- which often includes a new governance, technology, information architecture and design.

Posted by jamesr at 08:23 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Search sucks, but could it be any other way?

Let's face it, search sucks in most organisations. But could it really be any other way, as things current stand?

Taking a step back for the moment, the question is worth asking: even if an organisation is committed to delivering a good search experience, exactly how are they going to achieve this?

There are few resources and sources of assistance that an organisation can call upon when designing and implementing search:

• The right search vendor is chosen, to match the organisation's needs. So far, so good.
• The search engine comes in a shrink-wrapped box, with an install CD, and some technical documentation.
• The default install of the search engine is terrible, unusable, over-laden with features.
• Nothing in the search engine documentation talks about how to design the solution. There are no examples, samples, case studies or methodologies. Just a lot of under-the-hood technical configuration details.
• Most search engine vendors provided very limited (or no) professional services to support clients in designing good solutions (except for those vendors who offer products that can't work without professional services).
• There is almost nothing written about how to design good search, whether articles, case studies, reports or books.
• There are few consultancies that provide professional services around the design of search (as distinct from product selection).
• In many cases, organisations are entirely unaware that there is even work that needs to be done to make search work, beyond just installing the software. Primarily, because no-one told them.

So how are organisations supposed to find out how to deliver good search?

From where I stand, this lack of support and resources is one of the key reasons for the poor usability (and usefulness) of search. Clearly something needs to be done. While it is beyond the scope of this blog entry (and my thinking) to propose a complete solution, here are a few practical steps that could be taken:

• Much more needs to be written about designing search, by as many people as possible.
• Vendors should publish case studies, talking not about why a client selected them, but what the client implemented (and why).
• The default (out-of-the-box) configuration of search engines should be improved.
• Vendors should include in their manuals more about designing search, the business benefits, and the methodologies that can be used.
• Vendors should become more client-centric, in both their sales and implementation processes.
• Organisations need to start setting aside a little bit of time and money to design the search solution, beyond purchasing the software.
• The industry as a whole should start talking about how search is designed and implemented, with the goal of identifying some "best practice" approaches.

Posted by jamesr at 11:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Ruling by committee

Toby Ward has posted a blog entry on establishing an intranet committee to provide overall governance. To quote:

One approach to governance is the committee approach whereby a committee of stakeholders representing a cross-section of the business set the strategy and the done for the intranet or portal’s development. This next generation model of intranet governance is collaborative, with committees most commonly representing the major functional stakeholders in Communications, Human Resources, Operations, IT and business units. This model is most successful when the committee is championed by one or two key executives, often the CIO, the head of Communications, or HR. Instead of no owner, or one single owner, a collaborative team governs the intranet through the application of policies, standards and templates. This committee is typically responsible for the direction, vision, prioritization of projects, conflict resolution and final key decisions as it relates to the intranet.

Posted by jamesr at 08:16 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

The 8 types of navigation pages

Jared Spool has posted a short article outlining 8 types of navigation pages, as identified during their work over the years. To quote:

As we've watched users search for their desired content, we've realized there are patterns to the pages we see. We've started to catalogue these patterns and have concluded there are essentially 8 types of pages a user can run into, when searching content-rich sites.

These different page types turned out to be important as we discovered users behave differently as they encounter each one. If the design of a given type doesn't support the user's behavior, then the user is less likely to succeed in finding their target content. Often, pages fail because designers don't realize they were designing for the wrong type.

Posted by jamesr at 08:05 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Senior usability/IA/UX consulting role (Sydney, Australia)

Business has been going very well, and we've been having a lot of fun working on many interesting projects. Our biggest challenge is keeping up with the demand for our services. To that end, I'm looking to further grow the consulting team, in time for the start of the 2006 working year. Details below:

At Step Two Designs, we look beyond the interface to explore the underlying business and user needs. This involves conducting field research, identifying business requirements, developing strategies and recommendations, and then producing effective sites.

We work with a wide range of organisations throughout Australia, from large corporates to Australian Government agencies. Our articles and reports are very widely read, and our team participates in conferences and workshops globally. We have just been included on the global EContent 100 list for the third year running, recognising our role as a leading consulting firm in this space.

Our business is growing rapidly, and we are therefore looking to appoint further full-time senior usability/IA/UX consultants. These roles would be involved in a range of interesting and innovative projects, covering:

• field-based user research
• development of strategic and tactical recommendations
• application of IA techniques to large, information-rich sites
• design of effective page layouts
• validation of designs through usability testing

We are looking for experienced consultants able to take on these senior roles, located in our Sydney office. This role offers the unique opportunity to challenge the boundaries of usability and IA, and to explore the intersection with business strategy and organisational change.

You must have demonstrated industry experience as a consultant conducting the work outlined above, as well as the ability to be self-reliant in your daily activities.

All our consultants have the opportunity to publish articles, develop reports and present training courses. For this reason, strong writing and communication skills are vital, along with a desire to explore and innovate the fields of usability, IA and design.

Specific skills required:

• usability (expert)
• information architecture (expert)
• communication and writing (very strong)
• interface design (strong)
• interpersonal skills, within our team and with clients
• experience with information-rich sites such as intranets
• exposure to coaching or mentoring techniques (desirable)

Our focus as a business is on innovating the fields of usability and IA, as well as the ways in which we provide our services. There is no other firm within Australia that is conducting such a broad mix of consulting, training and report writing. Through an emphasis on mentoring and coaching our clients, we provide a uniquely stimulating and engaging working environment for our whole team.

Note: applicants must currently hold permanent resident status (or equivalent) in Australia or New Zealand. We are also not looking to engage consultants in sub-contracting relationships, or other non-permanent positions.

Please e-mail your resume (phone or fax contact will not be accepted)

Posted by jamesr at 09:50 AM | Permalink
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A swiss army knife, closed

In a recent article on the beauty of simplicity, Marissa Mayer of Google is quoted as saying:

"Google has the functionality of a really complicated Swiss Army knife, but the home page is our way of approaching it closed. It's simple, it's elegant, you can slip it in your pocket, but it's got the great doodad when you need it. A lot of our competitors are like a Swiss Army knife open--and that can be intimidating and occasionally harmful."

I like this analogy a lot, and I think it has a lot of relevance for intranet search as well. The fundamental principle is: don't expose users to complexity up front, but make it available when they need it...

Posted by jamesr at 09:09 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Step Two Designs listed on EContent 100 for 2005

Well, I'm excited. We have won a position on the EContent 100 list for the third year in a row, in the consulting category. This is what the judges said about us:

Intranet developers unafraid of asking for directions need look no further than Step Two Designs' Intranet Roadmap, which delineates a methodology for developing or redeveloping an intranet. The Sydney, Australia-based company claims to move "beyond the idea" (step one) and put concepts into practice (step two) through its CM, intranets, IA, usability, and KM support services; training events it hosts at home and abroad; and its development of practical solutions such as the Content Management Toolkit. In March, Step Two published Staff Directories, a best-practices report on designing and implementing an effective online staff directory.

We are honoured to be included on this list again, and look forward to another busy and exciting year in 2006...

Posted by jamesr at 08:27 AM | Permalink
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Crap Circles

Gardiner Morse has written an article challenging the over-use of circular diagrams by vendors and consulting firms. To quote:

The circle below, from a global accounting firm's Web site, is used to illustrate the company's consulting services for owner-managed businesses. It shows the business life cycle "maturity phase" leading, inexplicably, into the "conception/ start-up phase." This company's clients should ask whether they really want to be guided in circles. (To be fair, the shortcomings of this example and those that follow are exaggerated by lack of narration; someone with a laser pointer could probably explain what the diagrams should show, even if they don’t.)

[Thanks to Tony Byrne.]

Posted by jamesr at 08:21 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

The enterprise user experience -- bridging the IT/marketing divide

Bob Goodman has written an article on "enterprise user experience", discussing how to bring together disparate areas of the organisation to deliver better interfaces and experiences. To quote:

Thankfully, the ideas and practices of enterprise UX design are gaining mindshare, succeeding where the GUI paradigm failed, and creating a shared tech-marketing domain. Companies are beginning to realize that UX professionals bring positive solutions to the table. Today, we see savvy technologists and marketers starting to embrace the enterprise UX concept because both camps stand to gain much in doing so.

Posted by jamesr at 12:46 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Back home

I landed back in Sydney this morning, after my three week around-the-world trip that included the UK, Denmark and the US.

The trip was a lot of fun, most of all meeting up with the many people I've been chatting with via email, but had never met face-to-face. Thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome everywhere that I went.

So, now to catch up on my backlog of tasks in the office...

Posted by jamesr at 12:06 PM | Permalink
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CMS podcasts

Lisa Welchman, one of the leading CMS consultants in the US, has started publishing a series of podcasts on content management topics, involving interviews with well-known figures. Published so far:

• Ann Rockley ("Enterprise Content Management")
• Bob Boiko ("WordSoup")

Posted by jamesr at 11:54 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

The danger of too much compromise when consulting

Consulting isn't an easy business. While the consultant is often employed to assist with delivering a great project, this can quickly run into challenges and roadblocks. For example, the goal might be to deliver a portal that meets users needs, but this is hamstrung by the need to minimise customisation and to use out-of-the-box capabilities (as mandated by the IT department).

In these situations, the consultant is often forced to compromise. The methodology is reworked, the goals are adjusted, the deliverables are scaled-back. While this is often frustrating, the consultant feels that they have at least added some value (which is better than nothing at all).

Experienced consultants, well aware of this need to compromise, are often quick to find a path of "least resistance". At the end of the day, if the client asks for something to be done a certain way (even if it isn't the right way), they're paying the money. So the work is done, and something is delivered, even if it isn't great.

This can be a dangerous situation, however. Organisations (particularly large corporates, in my experience) can have very limited experience on the right way to approach projects. They are also compromising before the consultant even starts, to fit internal political demands.

So project after project is compromised. Money is spent, but user needs are not well met. Product or site designs aren't great, hoped-for innovations are not achieved.

For our part as consultants, we are keenly aware of these challenges. In practice, we don't want to do any work that doesn't look to deliver a great outcome (otherwise the client isn't going to be a great reference site!). For this reason, we have declined work on many occasions. If the project timetable is too short, the resources not available, or the methodology isn't right, we pass on the work.

This is not to say that our approach is always right, and the prospective client's is always wrong. Rather, it just means that we just aren't a great fit for what the organisation is looking for, so we leave the work for another (more suitable) consulting firm.

We always raise issues where we see them, and we take responsibility for the outcome, not just the activity. This isn't always easy, and it would be simpler to just take the path of least resistance, but it does allow us to sleep more easily at night. And at the end of the day, we can be genuinely proud of what our projects deliver.

Of course, not all projects go smoothly, and issues always arise. But at least we've done our best to set the project on the right path from the outset, and have fought to get the best outcome. Hopefully this is having at least a small impact on the intranets and other sites we are involved with...

Posted by jamesr at 12:05 PM | Permalink
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OZCHI conference next week (Canberra, Australia)

Forwarding details provided by Ash Donaldson:

Yes, OZCHI is now on us, starting next Monday (21st Nov) in Canberra with 2 full days of tutorials and workshops, and then 2.5 days of presentations.

Full details about the tutorials on offer

Registration to tutorials are still open

Karen Holtzblatt, author of the books Contextual Design and Rapid Contextual Design, will be our opening keynote. This year, we have a program packed not only with the latest research, but a whole stream dedicated to practitioners!

The presentations from our keynotes and various presenters from around the world will happen from Wed 23rd until Friday 25th November lunch time. New research, case studies, demonstrations and panels complete our program.

Full program

Posted by jamesr at 01:56 AM | Permalink
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Enterprise IA seminar slides

Lou Rosenfeld has generously published all of his Enterprise IA seminar slides. To quote:

I'm not sure why, but enough people have now asked me to make my Enterprise IA seminar slides available. All 251. Fine, it's here (8.6Mb PPT).

Posted by jamesr at 01:36 AM | Permalink
Categories:

A lot of good (but invisible) intranet folk

I'm really enjoying the KMWorld & Intranets conference, most of all the discussions with other content management and intranet people. What these recent conferences have really highlighted to me is that there is actually a fair bit of intranet expertise about, within organisations or consulting firms.

These intranet folk, however, are almost entirely invisible. In my news aggregator, for example, I have over a dozen CMS feeds, two dozen usability/IA feeds, but only only two (!) intranet-specific feeds.

I would love to spend more time talking with other intranet professionals, sharing ideas and experiences. But how can this happen when it's impossible to actually find who is doing work in this space!

So this is my call to everyone working in the intranet space: make yourself more visible, as there's a huge need to build a stronger community around intranets. A simple starting point would be to establish a blog, and to start posting on your day-to-day experiences. Even write a small article or two.

If nothing else, I'd love to build up a more extensive set of intranet feeds. So if you already have a blog and I've haven't found it (sorry!), drop me an email to say hi.

Posted by jamesr at 02:06 AM | Permalink
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Does it make the planes fly?

A few weeks ago, I participated in an intranet conference in Sydney. One of the speakers was Cushla Dawson from Air New Zealand, and she talked about a question that she was often asked within Air NZ regarding the intranet:

"Does it make the planes fly?"

I thought this was wonderful. Don't get me wrong, this hasn't made Cushla's life very easy, as it's hard to get resources and support when this is the question it quickly comes back to.

What I love though, is this the great clarity of business focus. At the end of the day, the fundamental purpose of Air New Zealand is to fly people from A to B. If the intranet can't assist the airline to deliver this service, then is it really providing enough business value?

All organisations can learn something from this. Ask yourself: does my intranet really help to "make the planes fly?" If it doesn't, look to do something more, something new. Something beyond just delivering HR and finance information, online forms and a staff directory...

Posted by jamesr at 04:20 AM | Permalink
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San Jose Happy Hour

Well, I arrived in the US last night. I'm looking forward to the KMWorld & Intranets conference, including running my two half-day workshops today.

Since this is my first time to the US, I thought it would be nice to catch up with a few of the locals (and not-so-locals). With the assistance of Tony Byrne, we've organised a happy hour on Wednesday, details as follows:

Who: meet up with myself and Tony Byrne (CMS Watch), and others interested in content management and intranets

When: Wednesday 16 November, 6pm

Where: Mission Ale House (97 E Santa Clara St), about 5 blocks from the convention center.

How much: We'll cover the munchies; cash bar.

If you get a chance, drop me an email to RSVP, otherwise just turn up that evening. Hope to see you all there!

Posted by jamesr at 11:48 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Danish user-centred design

Today I visited the Dansk Design Centre in Copenhagen, Denmark. Plenty of fun things to see, but the one thing that really jumped out at me was the widespread and comfortable use of "designing with users" and "user-centred design" in a number of the displays.

Yes, there was a fair number of pretty and pointless designs. But there was also a strong showing of objects created with the sole purpose of enriching the lives of those who used them, bringing together form and function. For example, a plastic medicine bottle with notches on the lid, allowing it to be levered open using a pen or the edge of a table. The purpose being to assist people with arthritis or other disabilities.

There were also a number of other medical-related designs, including new variations on the wheelchair, and a display about a user-centred redesign of a hospital environment.

The use of the term user-centred design seemed very natural in this environment, as if it needed no explanation for Danes. I was very encouraged, and I can only hope that this is gaining the same recognition in other countries too.

Anyway, tomorrow morning I'm off to the US, to present at the KMWorld & Intranets conference. I'm looking forward this this, and hunt me down for a chat if you are in the area.

Posted by jamesr at 05:13 AM | Permalink
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Will the CMS market crystalise rather than consolidate?

As Tony Byrne has pointed out on a number of occasions, the start of every new year sees the prediction that the "CMS marketplace will consolidate". In this view, some vendors will go bust, while others will merge together into larger solutions providers. This is also supposed to involve a move towards greater consistency (and commoditisation) of offerings in the market.

I don't see this happening. Instead, I see that vendors are continuing to diverge over time, rather than converge. The web content management marketplace is extremely busy, with every vendor doing fairly good business. Vendors are also still looking for the new "killer features" that will wipe out their competitors.

In this environment, there is little incentive for vendors to be consistent with other products. Why deliver the same features, and use the same terminology, when there is still the desire to outcompete all other vendors?

Naturally, this divergence has created a hugely complex marketplace. It is also a very inefficient marketplace: vendors have difficulties identifying potential customers; while organisations have no idea of where to even start looking for possible solutions.

This is not going to get any simpler in the near future.

Instead, I potentially see the market crystalising around specific problem areas or vertical markets. For example, some vendors may cluster around delivering solutions to health care organisations, or universities. Others may primarily target ecommerce websites, or large intranets.

Over time, this would allow customers to more easily identify potential solutions, even as the overall size of the market continues to grow. Vendors would also be able to better target their marketing efforts.

I'm not saying that this should (or must) happen, or that there will be a coordinated movement towards this "crystalisation". What I am saying is that the current situation is not sustainable. In the absence of any immediate chance of "convergence" or "consolidation", crystalisation may be the only option left for many CMS vendors...

Posted by jamesr at 11:43 PM | Permalink
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Portals - can we solve our intranet issues out of a box?

Nick Besseling has written a blog post discussing some issues on portals. To quote:

My main concern about 'Portal' software is the lack of accessibility and usability standard compliance with the software as well as taking the ability away from organisations to ensure that the code of their intranet is clean and of a validated standard. (This will be of even more importance to organisations in the public sector that may need to comply with standards set by government.)

Posted by jamesr at 12:10 AM | Permalink
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If its ethnography, its gotta be right

Rashmi Sinha has written a blog entry that presents a pragmatic look at the use of ethnography, in corporate contexts. To quote:

Lets assume for a moment that its fairly easy to do the qualitative research (its not, but lets assume, shall we). Even so, there are many challenges remaining - how do you make sure that the insights in the observer's head reach other members of the product team (too often, the researchers learns a lot, but only a very small portion of the distilled insight is transferred). How do you synthesize those insights? How do you go from that synthesis to the product concept? And how do you validate those product concepts - make sure they generalize beyond the few people you were able to observe?

Posted by jamesr at 12:44 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management, Usability & user-centered design

Putting perfect participants in every session

Jared Spool has written an article on obtaining participants for usability testing. To quote:

When putting together a design study, whether it is usability testing, field research, or focus group activity, it turns out that the most critical activity is recruiting the right participants. Over the past few years, we've interviewed several dozen user experience professionals, looking at the practices they use to conduct their research. As we dissected every activity involved in producing a successful study, we came to the conclusion that recruiting participants is the lynchpin that holds the study together.

Posted by jamesr at 12:23 AM | Permalink
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Enterprise usability

Jakob Nielsen has written an article on what he calls "enterprise usability", which addresses the broader issues and challenges of software (etc) in an organisational setting. To quote:

Complex rules often cause enterprise usability problems. For example, airlines are notorious for the complexity of their fare structures. This causes individual-user problems on travel sites, as well as enterprise problems for the airlines themselves, because the complex fares complicate many other business processes. In addition to needing more staff to handle customer inquiries, airlines suffer lower customer satisfaction.

Posted by jamesr at 11:21 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Usability & user-centered design

Enjoying Aarhus

Having spent a few days in London, I've arrived in Aarhus (Denmark). I must say, it's a lovely city, very easy to walk around, with plenty of good shopping. I've also been made to feel extremely welcome, by not just the conference organisers (thanks Janus and Flemming!), but by Danish people in general.

I've just given my half-day "CMS strategy and requirements" tutorial as part of cmf2005. I had an excellent group of participants, many of whom had strong experience and raised excellent questions and comments. A good interactive audience always makes such a difference.

So, onto the rest of the conference...

Posted by jamesr at 11:07 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Made it to London

Well, I'm writing this from a hotel room in London, on my way through to present at cmf2005. Including my workshops and presentations at KMWorld & Intranets, I'll be on the road for 3 solid weeks.

It's going to be a fun (if tiring) trip, and I'm most looking forward to finally meeting face-to-face many of the people that I've been conversing with via email for such a long time. If you're in Denmark or San Jose, drop me a line as I'd love to meet up for a chat.

Posted by jamesr at 06:20 PM | Permalink
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Interview with Tony Byrne

Lou Rosenfeld has interviewed Tony Byrne, regarding content management and other topics. To quote:

Maybe by the time they find me they've already justified a CMS project to themselves and their boss. But the more I talk to companies, the more I feel that their real business problems concern content--their content sucks, or there's too much of it, or too little or whatever. You can get people to acknowledge that, but in the back of their minds they keep some hope that a CMS will fix their content deficiency, or at least help fix it. Certainly, some corporate cultures require a major technology project just to justify shaking things up.

Posted by jamesr at 06:09 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Enterprise information architecture in context (revised)

James Melzer has published a revised version of his enterprise information architecture diagram. To quote:

Back at the beginning of October I spoke at the 2005 East Coast IA Retreat on Enterprise Information Architecture. The talk was about using the language of Enterprise Architects to talk about IA among enterprise planning folk. So I went over the Zachman Framework and offered ideas on how to extend the framework to accommodate user experience (and IA). I am planning a more extensive post on the topic soon.

Posted by jamesr at 09:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Information management

Search engine 'best bets'

Much can be done to improve the quality of search results. No amount of tweaking of metadata or search configuration will, however, ensure that the most relevant results always appear at the beginning of the list.

This is where search engine 'best bets' come in. These are a hand-created list of key resources for common queries, and they can dramatically improve the search experience, particularly on information-rich sites such as intranets.

Presenting best bets

In the screenshot shown, the staff member has searched for 'organisational structure'. The first section highlights the intranet page 'CSIRO organisational structure'. Below that, the rest of the 4821 matching search results are presented, most of which just include the words 'organisational structure' somewhere in the page.

[Read the full article.]

Posted by jamesr at 05:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles, Search tools

Meeting your intranet users

Intranets serve a diverse range of users in organisations, from staff in head office to those in regional offices, or on the front line. These users are not all the same, and do not have the same needs, issues or environment. A key principle for intranet teams is therefore: you can't usefully deliver information to users that you haven't personally met.

This article discusses the challenges in delivering information to all staff within an organisation, and outlining practical approaches that ensure efforts spent publishing intranet content are not wasted.

Users are not the same

There is no such thing as 'intranet users', as this presupposes that all staff within an organisation have the same information needs.

[Read the full article.]

Posted by jamesr at 04:57 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles

10 principles of effective information management

Improving information management practices is a key focus for many organisations, across both the public and private sectors. This is being driven by a range of factors, including a need to improve the efficiency of business processes, the demands of compliance regulations and the desire to deliver new services.

In many cases, 'information management' has meant deploying new technology solutions, such as content or document management systems, data warehousing or portal applications. These projects have a poor track record of success, and most organisations are still struggling to deliver an integrated information management environment.

Effective information management is not easy. There are many systems to integrate, a huge range of business needs to meet, and complex organisational (and cultural) issues to address.

This article draws together a number of 'critical success factors' for information management projects. These do not provide an exhaustive list, but do offer a series of principles that can be used to guide the planning and implementation of information management activities.

From the outset, it must be emphasised that this is not an article about technology. Rather, it is about the organisational, cultural and strategic factors that must be considered to improve the management of information within organisations. The key goal of this article is to help information management projects succeed.

[Read the full article.]

Posted by jamesr at 04:47 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, James' articles