Articles by Month: September 2007

Use a sliding scale of expertise

Dan Willis has written an excellent post on using a "sliding scale of expertise" to resolve design debates. To quote:

If you're in a room full of 20 people arguing about what shade of blue to use, at least you know what your biggest problem is. To get the most out of your organization, expertise needs to be protected throughout the development process. I like to use a sliding scale of expertise to do that.

PS. gotta love the cartoons as well, which are one of Dan's other great talents, beyond being a tremendously experienced UX lead.

Posted by jamesr at 09:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Intranet Planning Day (Canberra, October)

Another quick note to highlight the Intranet Planning Day masterclass that I'll be running in Canberra on 19 October. These contain all my latest thinking on how to deliver successful intranets, including the 6x2 methodology.

Topics covered during the day:

• model of intranet evolution, explaining why intranets are the way they are
• creating an effective "sales pitch"
• identifying staff needs (including techniques such staff interviews, workplace observation, contextual inquiry and task analysis)
• 6x2 methodology for intranets
• positioning the intranet as a business tool
• leading successful intranets and gaining management support
• redefining the role of intranet teams

These are great fun days, with a huge amount of information packed in. I guarantee that you'll come away buzzing with new ideas on how to deliver a better intranet.

Full workshop details

Posted by jamesr at 09:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Information architecture fundamentals (Canberra, October)

Just a quick reminder that our Information architecture fundamentals workshop being held in Canberra on 26 October 2007 is rapidly approaching. This workshop is designed to teach core IA skills, and is a very effective way of building in-house expertise within web and intranet teams.

During the workshop, you will learn:

• importance of balancing the requirements of users and business
• techniques to gather information about the needs of your site visitors
• ways that information can be organised
• how to create a classification or taxonomy for your site
• importance of good labelling to help people find what they need
• how to design navigation methods and page layouts
• processes to follow for information architecture projects

We've recently re-started these workshops after a break, and they have a very strong reputation for teaching practical and pragmatic skills. (This is also the only IA workshop that we'll be running before 2008.)

Full workshop details

Posted by jamesr at 12:54 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Business Process Interoperability Framework

AGIMO have released a new Business Process Interoperability Framework, to assist in coordination between Australian Government agencies. To quote:

The Australian Government Business Process Interoperability Framework (BPIF) provides a guide and tools to assist agencies in making the transition to connected and shared modes of operation. It has been endorsed by the Business Process Transformation Committee (BPTC) as a key tool to support whole of government business transformation.

The BPIF is a component of the Australian Government Interoperability Framework.

(The report came out a while ago, but has only just been published up to the AGIMO website.)

Posted by jamesr at 09:45 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management

Building block definitions (containers)

Joe Lamantia continues his series on designing portals, by looking at building block definitions. To quote:

The different kinds of Container blocks in the system play different roles, based on their relative size, in the overall effort to construct dashboards or portals. The smaller blocks--Tiles, Tile Groups, and Views–-enable the display of content, and support users' interactions with content. Sections, Dashboards or Portals, and Dashboard or Portal Suites–-the larger blocks–enable the navigation, organization, and management of collections of content. Pages straddle the middle of the size continuum; they are the largest block whose role is primarily to provide a framework for display of dashboard or portal content, and the smallest building block which plays an important navigational / organization role in the system. The different kinds of blocks work in concert to enable the creation of a scalable, navigable, and maintainable information architectures that support high-quality user experiences.

Posted by jamesr at 09:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Do you need an ECMS, WCMS, or a portal?

Tony Byrne has written an article exploring the business cases for ECMS, WCMS and portal. To quote:

You want to find a good fit with your business objectives. First that means figuring out which type of technology will provide the biggest near-term value. Then it means knowing what type of scenario(s) you're addressing, to begin to isolate vendors who potentially hit that sweet spot. It doesn't matter whether you employ our list of scenarios or not; the key thing is that you carefully outline what you're trying to achieve with which types of content. A little analysis here can save you a lot of time and money later.

Posted by jamesr at 09:14 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

How to make the most out of a vendor demo

Seth Gottlieb has written a superb entry on running CMS vendor demos. To quote:

After you watch a couple of vendor demos, it doesn't take long to realize that the performance of the demo (how well the presenters know the product and how well they understand and connect with the audience) plays as much a part of the product impression as the quality and the capabilities of the product itself. Given that the sales team probably is not going to be around during your implementation or when your users first start using the system, this should scare you if you are basing your selection on the product demo. While it is important that a software vendor cares enough about your business to put some thought and effort into showing you the product, you also want to build your system on the the most suitable product. Here are some tips to manage vendor demonstrations that will isolate the important aspects of the vendor and the product and filter out the extraneous information that may confuse or distract you.

Posted by jamesr at 09:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Usability tests with 30 observers (cont)

Jared Spool first published an article on conducting usability tests with 30 observers. To quote:

Because there's a large number of design agents and stake holders involved and often a small number of available tests to observe, we can find ourselves in a situation where we need to have many observers in one session. It's not unusual to have 30 or more observers sitting in a single usability test. Here's how we pull it off.

He then followed this up with another post answering some questions:

The last time I did this was for a top-10 e-commerce site (who averages approximately $1.2 billion in sales each year). We observed 24 users this way, collecting the data from each one. Each session was filled with 30 folks (we had to put together an elaborate signup and waiting-list system to handle it), often with senior executives -- directors, VPs, and even the CEO. Most observers came to more than one session and would cancel other meetings to attend.

Posted by jamesr at 05:51 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

How to plan a KM communications strategy

Patrick Lambe has published a plan for a KM communications strategy. To quote:

This concept map catalogues all the elements of a KM communications strategy that we've found useful, with some ideas for messages, media and audiences. Download the pdf version formatted for A3 size printing for easier reading!

Posted by jamesr at 05:42 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

CMS and user-generated content?

I'm chairing a conference on content management at the moment, thus the flood of CM related posts. One of the topics that has repeatedly come up is web 2.0 and user-generated content in specific. The question was raised: what do content management systems provide in this space?

The answer is: not much. There is a significant gap in the ability of CMS products to handle user-generated content. Let's explore this further...

Content management systems are fundamentally designed to support a publishing process. That is, people within the organisation produce the original content, it's reviewed and finally published. There is also a focus on the manageability of the site around this, including review and expiry dates, etc.

Then web 2.0 comes along, and we want to provide site visitors with the ability to interact with the site. This ranges from the very simple to the very complex:

• adding comments to pages
• "was this page useful?" functionality
• adding reviews to supplement editorially-produced content
• seamlessly associating discussion with static content
• having the majority of the content of the site produced by site users

At present, CMS products have been caught on the "back foot" regarding these needs, and are still stuck in the world of traditional editorial processes. I see this is a challenge on two levels...

In the short-term, CMS products need to catch up their feature set to encompass some of these needs. Beyond this, there is a significant architectural challenge for CMS products in handling user-generated content. For example:

• How should user-generated content be captured?
• From the wrong side of the firewall?
• Is it versioned?
• Or reviewed?
• Via workflow?
• How is it managed in the CMS repository?
• What tools should be provided to site administrators?

These aren't easy questions to answer. Right now, it means that product purchasers are bound to be disappointed by the functionality offered by CMS solutions in this regard. It's also going to require a lot of thinking and talking to work out what the solutions should be, and what role CMS products will play.

PS. for vendors thinking they are offering web 2.0 functionality by including "blogs" and "wikis" as CMS modules, think again, you've got a lot to learn.

As ever, email me your thoughts...

Posted by jamesr at 01:13 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

What does a web CMS do?

In a lot of the work that I'm doing at the moment, I'm seeing very ambitious goals for content management system (CMS) projects. Bundled up in the project are many different capabilities, beyond just page publishing functionality.

This is causing a lot of problems. Organisations are going out to market looking for too much, not understanding what CMS products are best designed to do. This leads to a lot of disappointment, as well as blown out budgets.

So I thought it might be useful to post a quick summary table listing what a CMS does, and what should be obtained and implemented separately:

In practice, there are three reasons why you would get something separately from the CMS:

• CMS doesn't do it
• it may be a module, but could be obtained separately
• there is a whole other marketplace of tools in the required space

Note of course that the capabilities of CMS products vary widely, and many have various "modules" that can offer some of the functionality listed above. I would still argue that this isn't core functionality for a CMS, so I would always think twice.

Posted by jamesr at 05:04 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

What a knowledge sharing policy might look like

Patrick Lambe has written an article outlining a possible knowledge sharing policy. To quote:

When you want to introduce new information or knowledge management practices and habits in an organisation, it's usually a good idea to make sure that your organisation's policies reflect the things you want to happen. This doesn't mean that the policies do the work of implementation and change management for you (ie you can't just issue a policy and then sit back and wait for magic to happen), but they support it by capturing (hopefully) in concise language what you'd like to happen, so that everybody is operating from the same point of view. With Marita Keenan last year, I co-authored a guide to knowledge and information management policy development.

Posted by jamesr at 01:30 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Input by many, decisions by ????

Andrew McAfee has written an article on the "great decoupling" and the impact on decision making in organisations. To quote:

In that post, however, I think I actually understated the extent to which information technology is opening up new possibilities about decision making and governance within organizations. In "The Great Decoupling" I focused only on disappearing information costs, but there’s also another very interesting development: the appearance of technologies for collecting and distilling distributed knowledge in novel ways.

Posted by jamesr at 08:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Social networks and group formation

Shiv Singh has written an article on social networks and group formation, drawing upon a range of academic research. To quote:

The online social network field is broad, and any literature review can only focus on a selection of articles. The present article highlights recent research in the field and focuses on centrality, linkage strength, identity, trust, activity and benefits. By no means is this review comprehensive, but it should give practitioners some useful concepts to consider as they design social network based web applications.

Posted by jamesr at 04:35 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration

Adopting collaboration: continuing the discussion

A few days ago I posted a model for the adoption of collaboration, which outlined the following phases:

• Phase 0: Fragmentation
• Phase 1: Gardening
• Phase 2: Business solutions
• Phase 3: Rich networks
• Phase 4: Coherence

This has generated some excellent conversation via other blogs. Matt Moore started the conversation by adding his insights against each of the phases:

I look at phase 4 and go "yeah, right". The collaboration tool space is changing very quickly at the moment. Phase 4 feels like a utopia at the moment. And given this dynamic environment, a very unlikely utopia. I think many organisations have enough on their plate trying to get to phase 3. I would feel nervous talking about phase 4 because I can just see a senior exec going: "This sounds great, I want one of these by the end of the month!" and mayhem ensuing. What is more likely in the next 1-3 years are rich networks (collaborative ecosystems) and then richer networks - with tools dropping in and out. "Coherence" feels way too static to me as a goal at the moment.

I certainly agree that phase 4, is a "nirvana" state and that phase 3 is the goal for the next 1-3 years. I don't believe we can even articulate what "coherence" would really look like yet, although vendors are busy promising it via their solutions. My experience, though, is that we need to "capture the high ground" in these models, explicitly including the longer-term vision. Without this, these models are too quickly ignored when a "sexier" approach comes along. My goal was also to highlight that there are three big phases that come first, before attempting to tackle phase 4...

Still, I agree that it is always dangerous to paint a picture of the "holy grail", particularly if this is taken on by over-enthusiastic senior execs. Matt, any thoughts on how to find a middle ground between the two extremes of no vision and looking too high?

James Dellow then joined the discussion with some excellent insight, including:

To me, James is describing the innovation process and some elements of the collaborative infrastructure, where as I would treat them as parallel processes. The issue that Matt points out is the challenge of trying to reach an equilibrium or stability (or perhaps perfection? - see The Search for the Perfect Intranet). In this respect I think the process James is describing should be seen as a cycle, not an end state. In fact if you managed to stabilise your collaborative environment I would be wondering what you have done wrong.

I definitely agree that this model is very simplistic, and my goal was to give organisations an idea of how (and where) to start, and to get them moving in the right direction.

In practice, many things will be happening in parallel, and different parts of the organisation will be at different phases. There's definitely a need for continuous innovation, but I think that phase 4 is far enough off to prevent organisations from trying to "stabilise" on this state.

It's a challenging (and fun!) space. There's plenty of complexity, and it's still uncharted waters. I do think we need some common language for everyone to align around, and hopefully this simplistic model is the start of that. James, what do you think?

Anyway, thanks for keeping the conversations going, and apologies again for the broken commenting on my site. (I promise I'm working on it, but life's very busy, so I'll need a bit more time!)

Posted by jamesr at 12:20 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration

Enterprise 2.0: working in the middle ground

vs

It's been interesting to observe how the battle lines are shaping up between the evangelists of enterprise 2.0 on the one side, and those perceived to be resisting such technologies on the other side. In this piece, however, I'm going to argue that both sides are wrong, and that we need to find a third way.

Libertarians

On one side we have what I would call the "libertarians", the body-and-soul evangelists of enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches. While not all speaking with the one voice, there is a common theme of "get out of the way and let it happen". In other words, encourage the release of enterprise 2.0 technologies into an organisation, let staff find their own uses for it, and information management problems will start to melt away.

This camp even sees that senior management support may be corrosive to enterprise 2.0, as success relies on a groundswell of "grass roots" adoption. There is certainly no place for policies or governance in this world view, or the direct management of technologies by central teams.

Corporate suits

On the other side, you have the "corporate suits". Mostly driven from an IT, IM or KM perspective, there is typically a focus on enterprise content management (ECM), and the general adoption of "enterprise" solutions. This includes products that have been in the market for some time, such as web content management systems, document management systems, records management systems, and the like.

This camp focuses on developing overall enterprise strategies, information management governance and change management. Supporting this side are a large number of well-established vendors, and the analyst firms that surround them.

The debate between these two sides is often polarised, argued in black-and-white terms. The libertarians see that enterprise software is a dinosaur overdue for the asteroid, while the corporate suits see the threat of unmanaged software use.

Both sides are wrong

The difficulty with the libertarian approach is the reliance on problems just "sorting themselves out" if the right tools are made available. The challenge is that while these tools (including collaboration tools) are great for the individual and the team, they increase the fragmentation of information across the organisation as a whole. (More on this later.)

This is the lesson we didn't learn from the Lotus Notes era, where we ended up with tens of thousands of Notes databases scattered far and wide. And don't forget the impact of the easy availability of Access databases and Excel spreadsheets.

That's not to say that the new generation of tools haven't given some consideration to this, but it's naive to think that organisations will simply "self-organise" a solution that works for both the individual and the organisation as a whole.

On the other side, the corporate suits have been in trouble for some time now. The adoption of these systems is very low, and the inherent complexity of the products is hurting organisations. There are questions on whether a fully-centralised model for information management can ever work within modern, complex organisations.

In practice, very little meaningful discussion occurs within the traditional "enterprise" space about how to get staff working productively in these solutions, let alone how to connect together the huge information silos.

Finding the middle ground

Neither "libertarian" or "corporate suits" extreme works, and we're not really learning much by arguing between black and white. Instead, we need to be exploring the grey, the middle ground, the middle way.

Yes, we absolutely need the kinds of capabilities delivered by enterprise 2.0 technologies, and this addressing a huge unmet need within organisations. Can we stop their use? No. Should we try to stop or restrict their use? No.

We do need plans and strategies though, along with some simple guidance or governance for staff. We need to find much more mature ways of managing processes, and shaping outcomes. We need to let individuals and teams drive adoptions, but play a strong leadership role to ensure that the end outcome is desirable for all.

This is where all my thinking is around at the moment. The first outcome is the simple (simplistic?) model for collaboration adoption that I recently posted, and there's more to come.

Let's stop demonising either side, and instead ask the questions:

• Where do we want to end up?
• What does the best solution look like, and how do we get there from here?
• How to we make things work in the complex organisational environments we have in the real world?

Posted by jamesr at 11:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

Demystifying data analysis

Rachel Hinman has written an article on data analysis, in the context of user-centred design. To quote:

I always get a little miffed when I hear user-experience folk describe their data analysis process as looking for "a-ha moments." It seems like an evasive answer to a simple process question. But more importantly, it leaves one with the impression that coming up with research insights is an experience of epiphany, like Newton sitting under the apple tree discovering gravity.

Posted by jamesr at 06:39 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Strategies for improving enterprise search

John Ferrara has written an article on improving enterprise search. To quote:

Quality search results only come about through applied effort, requiring in particular the skills of an information architect. And IAs must be ready to go well beyond their traditional front-end role, digging into the functional backend and source data of the search engine. This article outlines how we can bolster findability and win back users' confidence.

Posted by jamesr at 05:40 PM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Conducting successful interviews with project stakeholders

Steve Baty has written an article on conducting stakeholder interviews. To quote:

A simple, semi-structured, one-on-one interview can provide a very rich source of insights. Interviews work very well for gaining insights from both internal and external stakeholders, as well as from actual users of a system under consideration. Though, in this column, I'll focus on stakeholder interviews rather than user interviews. (And I'll come back to that word, insights, a little later on, because it's important.)

Posted by jamesr at 12:53 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Card sorting: mistakes made and lessons learned

Sam Ng has written an article on card sorting mistakes. To quote:

Card sorting is a simple and effective method with which most of us are familiar. There are already some excellent resources on how to run a card sort and why you should do card sorting. This article, on the other hand, is a frank discussion of the lessons I've learned from running numerous card sorts over the years. By sharing these lessons learned along the way, I hope to enable others to dodge similar potholes when they venture down the card sorting path.

Posted by jamesr at 12:44 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

How to use KPIs in knowledge management

Patrick Lambe has published a guide to using KPIs in KM. To quote:

The paper is in three sections: the first sets out some guidelines for how to use KPIs smartly. The second section gives ideas for sample sets of KPIs covering KM activities and tools as diverse as communities of practice, KM roles, and use of wikis and blogs. The third section is a template for drawing up your own sets of KPIs. The document is in Word format so you can cut and paste whatever takes your fancy (please acknowledge your source). A last word of caution: if you take the whole set of KPIs in this document, you’re taking too many! Leave some time and effort to actually do the work you’re trying to monitor.

Another superb piece of work from the ever-thoughtful leader of KM in Singapore...

Posted by jamesr at 12:23 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Where collaboration tools fit in (Melbourne, Sydney)

Just a reminder that I'll be presenting two Where collaboration tools fit in afternoons in the coming month, details as follows:

• Melbourne
  25 September 2007
  Crowne Plaza Hotel
• Sydney
  10 October 2007
  Mercure Hotel

I'll be covering the four phases of collaboration, as well as providing a model that describes where to target collaboration tools

This is the latest thinking on collaboration, drawn from the observations of many different organisations. If you are planning to deploy collaboration tools (or have already!), this is the information you need to know to ensure that the best outcomes are obtained.

Posted by jamesr at 09:50 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Adopting collaboration tools in four phases

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about collaboration and collaboration tools. It's clear that there's a huge unmet need for this capability, but a lot of confusion about how best to introduce these tools to organisations.

What is equally sure is that just providing the tools and hoping for the best will make the situation dramatically worse, not better. So to avoid this, I've been exploring a possible model for how best to introduce collaboration tools. Here is a summary of my thoughts so far:

• Phase 0: Fragmentation

  As the usage of collaboration tools grows in an unmanaged an unconsidered way, so does the "fragmentation" of information. Key information is divided into ever-smaller spaces, locked up out of broad use, generating considerable information management and knowledge management problems. (This is not a search problem.)

• Phase 1: Gardening

  The starting point is to identify an overall owner for the collaboration tools, and to put in place simple governance, policies and management. Rather than trying to restrict usage, the approach is one of "gardening", helping to guide usage , connect the dots and identify best practices.

• Phase 2: Business solutions

  The next step is to identify key (and common) needs, and build solutions that are tailored to meet them. In this way, clear user needs can guide how to bring together different solutions (wikis, blogs, lists) into more coherent solutions. Possible targets include project collaboration, teaching or e-learning, collaborative authoring, communities of practice or research.

• Phase 3: Rich networks

  Organisation-wide collaboration will only be achieved with the silos are broken down between different spaces. This involves recognising the difference between "inwards" and "outwards" facing spaces, and putting in place processes for sharing and linking between them.

• Phase 4: Coherence

  This is the end goal, where there is coordination between the collaboration spaces at all levels, accessed through a personalised portal-like interface. The lines between different "tools" is blurred, creating a single working environment. (There's a lot to be done before anyone can reach this state.)

The idea behind this simple model is to give a "roadmap" for organisations confronted by the growing demands for collaboration tools. Not proscriptive, it aims to help "shape" the adoption of these tools, ensuring that common pitfalls are avoided.

I'll be writing more on this over the coming months...

(I'm also going to be talking more about this model at our after "Where collaboration tools fit in" sessions in Melbourne and Sydney. Come along and ask some questions!)

Posted by jamesr at 08:33 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Information management, Intranets

Tips on getting your staff aboard an intranet

Marisa Peacock has written an article outlining tips for getting staff engaged with the intranet. To quote:

Building and maintaining an Intranet can be challenging. For one, it's not always clear to everyone what the goals of an Intranet are. It may not be embraced by senior management, nor is it always structured well due to lack of resources and staff. So what to do when your Intranet is stifled?

Posted by jamesr at 10:40 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

The price of staying in the CMS game?

I've just released an article titled: Does your CMS vendor have product expertise?

Following on from that, I would argue that this is now the "ante" for CMS vendor to stay in the game, and will be one of the major differentiating factors in terms of who survives, and who doesn't.

To expand on that...

Even the big international vendors started from humble roots, and still go through periods of "growing pain" whey they have difficulty supporting their ever-expanding client base. Some vendors have also gained quite a reputation for the difficulty in migrating from one product version to the next.

Alongside these established vendors, new CMS vendors are constantly entering the market. (In Australia alone, there are 140+ vendors, 120 of which are local to the region.) Some of these vendors have excellent products, having had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others.

For all these vendors, however, the challenge is in migrating their business away from custom development to "product management". Those that cannot do that will ultimately fail.

(As outlined in the article, I include managing upgrades, code versioning, revision testing, support plans, etc in "product management".)

For new vendors, I would also argue that if they don't have a concrete plan (and the resources) to put in place the necessary product management from the outset, they shouldn't even bother launching.

In some ways, maybe this even relates to open source vendors, where the community must play the role of managing the "product" instead of the vendor.

So, what do you think?
Does this match your experiences (good and bad) with vendors?

Posted by jamesr at 09:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Intranet personalization: does it work?

Gerry McGovern has written an article on intranet personalisation. To quote:

The theory of intranet personalization is wonderful. The practice is generally woeful: hugely expensive implementations that totally fail; massive maintenance overheads and very little employee uptake.

Posted by jamesr at 09:24 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets

Does your CMS vendor have product expertise?

Choosing a content management system (CMS) is not just about finding the product with the right functionality. It's also about dealing with a vendor who can support your needs for the lifetime of the solution.

You need to be confident that there will be more than just help-desk support - the vendor should offer regular (trouble-free) product upgrades, a clear development plan, and good mechanisms for handling the needs of each CMS customer.

The challenge is that many vendors are great at code development, but poor at product management. While they are small this doesn't matter, but as they grow in scale, customers start to feel the pinch.

This briefing explores the way most CMS vendors have evolved, what this means for the way they work, and what you should be looking for when purchasing a solution.

Evolution of vendors

Most CMS vendors start off as web development or web design agencies, custom-creating websites for their clients. Over time, customers increasingly demand the ability to maintain their own sites, and a variety of simple editing interfaces are developed on a case-by-case basis to support this.

Once this has been done a dozen times, this editing code starts to be pulled together into a single code-base, which is still tailored for each customer. As the agency grows, there comes a point where this editing and publishing code is given a name, and it starts down the road of becoming a 'product'.

[CM Briefing 2007-16, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 02:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, James' articles

Why staff visit the intranet

Organisations often envisage their intranets as integral to the way staff do their jobs. Staff are expected to visit the intranet daily. While this is an admirable goal, it doesn't necessarily match the reality of most intranets today. There are clear reasons for staff to use the intranet, but these are not always well understood.

In practice, there are two key reasons for a staff member to come to the intranet: to find a specific piece of information, or to complete a specific task. Recognising this, intranet designers can ensure that intranet resources are targeted in ways that will have the greatest impact.

This briefing explores these two key reasons for intranet usage, and discusses their impact on intranet strategies and approaches.

Two reasons for visiting the intranet

There are two fundamental reasons why staff visit the corporate intranet:

• Finding a specific piece of information

  The staff member is looking for a specific fact, detail or figure (such as how much leave they have left to take this year).

• Completing a specific task

  The staff member has a particular activity to do, which the intranet can help with (such as booking travel).

Note that in both cases, the staff member is not looking for the HR manual, a procedure, or some other general resource. Instead, they are seeking something very specific to meet an immediate need.

[CM Briefing 2007-15, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 02:05 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets, James' articles, Usability & user-centered design

Using scenarios to select a CMS

Scenarios are narrative descriptions or stories that concisely outline how something will work in practice.

In the context of a content management system (CMS) project, scenarios are a very effective way of documenting key CMS requirements, and they complement the formal lists of functional requirements typically found in tender documents.

Content management scenarios provide a 'day in the life' description of how the CMS will be used, for example:

Richard enters the text for the page, and creates a link to the supporting PDF. Once the content has been spell-checked, Richard submits the page for review by Jane, his manager.

By using this story format, a large number of details can be conveyed in relatively few words. In practice, a single scenario can cover the same scope as several pages of functional requirements.

Scenarios are most effectively used during vendor demonstrations, to provide a 'script' for vendors to follow. This ensures that the vendor shows how the product will work in practice, meeting the specific needs of the organisation.

Having a common script across vendor demos also makes it easier to compare solutions, as well as providing a strong foundation for scoring the products against functional requirements.

This article will outline how to create effective scenarios, including concrete examples, guidelines and suggestions.

[September KM Column, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 01:55 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, James' articles

Intranet grassroots groups - German, Switzerland and the UK - there must be more!!

Jane McConnell has posted about the informal intranet groups that operate in different countries. To quote:

I'm in regular touch with people involved in intranets grassroots groups (my post from Aug 1 "To all intranet managers - things are getting better, aren't they?" encouraged some readers to report back on grassroots intranet organisations in their countries. By grassroots, I mean groups that are relatively informal, organised by intranet managers themselves, possibly facilitated or led by a consultancy, but if so, not as money-making ventures.

Posted by jamesr at 10:01 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Internal blogs written so far

As I've mentioned before, we established our internal blogging in Step Two about 4 1/2 years ago. As the most prolific internal blogger, I've now posted 2,500 entries, all with the goal of "sharing awareness". As a knowledge management strategy, it's been very successful, with every team member consistently posting on a daily or weekly basis.

It's interesting to look at my top entry categories:

• Prospectives, proposals and tenders (401 posts)
• Gossip (154)
• Workshops (138)
• Project updates (119)
• Resources (105)
• Conferences and events (91)
• Product development (77)

It's been busy, very busy. No shortage of work, and lots of gossip... ;-)

Posted by jamesr at 09:53 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management, Weblogs

Intranet managers, don't lose hope

Gerry McGovern has written an article encouraging intranet managers not to lose hope. To quote:

I meet a lot of intranet managers who are frustrated with their jobs. It's easy to understand why. But we need to be clever here. We need to get things in perspective. We need to think long-term.

Posted by jamesr at 11:01 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

The tagging growth curve

Joe Lamantia has written an article on the tagging growth curve. To quote:

The apparently irregular growth and spread of tagging is simply example of the real nature of how innovations spread. Professional analysts and other meaning makers tend to draw smooth graphs to depict these things. But in reality, natural systems (and the tagging / technology landscape is a legitimate ecosystem) are noisy, cyclical, chaotic, complex, fuzzy, non-linear, and unpredictable. They only appear to follow smooth curves at a high level of abstraction, or a low level of resolution.

Posted by jamesr at 10:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

7 components for a successful web site redesign

Jared Spool has written an article on the 7 components for a successful web site redesign. To quote:

We've spent the last five years studying teams involved in major redesign efforts. Some teams regularly produce innovative, user-satisfying enhancements to their sites. Other teams work hard, but their efforts result in expensive changes that, after all is said and done, don't really enhance the user's experience or help the business.

As we analyze the difference between these two types of teams, we've noticed a pattern: teams who focus on the long term are far more likely to create designs that really pay off for the organization. Short-term thinking gets the design done, but the team ends up doing it all over again months down the road. Long-term thinking deals with the inevitability of changes and turns the site in a living, breathing entity that grows with the organization's needs.

Posted by jamesr at 10:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

A stale state of tagging?

Thomas Vander Wal has written a piece on the current state of tagging. To quote:

It was in del.icio.us that we saw tagging that really did not work well in the past begin to become valuable as the clarity in tag terms that was missing in most all other tagging systems was corrected for in the use of a common object being tagged and the identity of the tagger. This set the foundation for some great things to happen, but have great things happened?

Posted by jamesr at 09:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture