Articles by Month: November 2007

The 8 challenges innovations face

Scott Berkun has written about the 8 challenges innovations face. To quote:

In chapter 3 of The Myths of Innovation, I explore why innovation methedologies are prone to fail. It’s not their fault - there are many factors involved that are out of the control of any individual. You can do many things right and still fail.

Posted by jamesr at 10:24 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Measuring innovation: the idea approval index

Scott Berkun has posted on an idea approval index for measuring innovation. To quote:

I hate most systems of innovation I see or read about, as they fail to directly attack most of core challenges innovators face. But one idea I’m found of is the idea approval index. Here’s how it works.

Posted by jamesr at 10:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

CMS business case

Seth Gottlieb has written a post on creating a CMS business case. To quote:

In my opinion, the business case discussion should be around the content itself - not the technology used to manage it. This is a difficult conversation to have for a number of reasons. First of all, the human effort required to manage content (no matter what tools you have), while very costly, does not have a big spending event that triggers an ROI conversation. The expenditures from managing content (or the cost of not managing it) happens in drips and drops but it can really bleed a company. Secondly, there is a misperception that all content is good and worth managing.

Posted by jamesr at 10:52 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Metrics & ROI

It's nice to have friends

It's nice to have friends. Over the years, we've met a lot of people at conferences and events, and have steady readers of the articles we publish. We've also worked with a lot of organisations, or have had conversations via emails.

The connections we build at conferences, however, can be lost at the end of the events. While many teams read our articles, this readership is largely invisible and unconnected.

So we've created a Friends of Step Two Facebook group. Everyone is welcome, and this is for those interested in intranets, information management, usability or information architecture.

We'll publish links to our regularly monthly articles, and well as cool stuff like the upcoming video interviews of the Intranet Innovation Awards winners.

Beyond that, the group is entirely open. Everyone is welcome to post links, photos and videos. Let's start a conversation, we're all friendly people...

Posted by jamesr at 10:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Conferences & presentations, Information architecture, Information management, Intranets, Usability & user-centered design

AwayToday - useful and well loved

Dorje McKinnon has written an entry on his award-winning AwayToday intranet functionality. To quote:

The problem : Staff absence from the workplace due to sickness, off site business commitments or travel for work caused a communications breakdown. This had a negative impact on our business.

The solution : "Share the love" - but seriously, sharing the information that was already available to some staff with everyone was our solution. Let everyone know where everyone else was, or at the very lease let them know if they were in the office or not. To this we added when they could be expected back in the office.

Posted by jamesr at 03:16 PM
Categories: Intranets

Intranet eating out

Dorje McKinnon has written an article on consuming XML services on an intranet. To quote:

Business Problem

Staff need to know the time in other offices around the world. The intranet tool I'd built in house worked well but every time somewhere changed their daylight saving time one or more office time's got out of synch and ended up being wrong. The tool relied on staff picking up problems, reporting them and me reacting.

Posted by jamesr at 09:30 AM
Categories: Intranets

Intranet information architecture (IA)

Jakob Nielsen has written an article on intranet IA. To quote:

Information architecture (IA) poses a tremendous challenge in designing any navigational system. Historically, intranets have had little in terms of systematic IA efforts; designers typically "structured" intranets according to the organic growth of pages and features provided by different departments. Employees suffered the consequences, repeatedly getting lost in confusing structures with inconsistent navigation options.

Posted by jamesr at 08:42 AM
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets

The four disciplines of content management

Gadgetopia have published their definition of the four disciplines of content management. To quote:

A lot of stuff gets lumped under the heading “content management.” In my experience, however, all the technical activities under the banner of content management can general be broken out into four disciplines.

Posted by jamesr at 11:18 AM
Categories: Content management

Making intranets work (for communicators)

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These are the slides from the 1.5 hour workshop I gave at the IABC "Communicators' Day Out" conference today. Focused on internal communications teams, the session explored intranet strategy and the role as a comms channel.

(As ever, the slides are mostly free of text.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:32 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets

Photo: Brooklyn Bridge

Stitching: Brooklyn Bridge

This is probably the best of my recent NY photos. You'll want to click through to Flickr, choose "All sizes", and see it nice and large to get the full effect...

Posted by jamesr at 05:39 AM
Categories: Photos

So what makes up a good search on an intranet?

Helen Day lists some questions to ask when assessing how good search is on your intranet. To quote:

• Is a people search available from every page?
• Is content search available on every page?
• Does people and content search each have its own search box?
• Is it in the same place on every page?
• Is the search field on results page ready for the next search?

(This is something that we've written a lot on, and our best practices are contained in the Improving Intranet Search report.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:10 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design

Designing for nonprofits

Olga Sanchez-Howard has written an article on designing for nonprofits. To quote:

The most important difference between nonprofits and commercial or government entities is how they do business. This trickles down to every aspect of working with nonprofits and will ultimately affect anyone’s decisions to work or not work with them. The following are some of the challenges I faced in my two-year commitment to only work with nonprofits.

Posted by jamesr at 11:40 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Crappy personas vs. robust personas

Jared Spool responds to recent criticisms of personas. To quote:

Some products, like the tools built by 37Signals, don't need personas. Not because the folks at 37Signals have any special powers, but because they themselves are the personas they want to build for. They build tools they like to use themselves. For them, that will work great.

Not all teams have that luxury. A hospital IT team, building software systems used by critical care nurses in the hospital's pediatric intensitve care unit, are not building tools they will use themselves. They are building tools used by others whose education, experience, goals, contexts, and tasks are extremely different.

Posted by jamesr at 10:20 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Building a data-backed persona

Andrea Wiggins has written an article on building a data-backed persona. To quote:

Incorporating the voice of the user into user experience design by using personas in the design process is no longer the latest and greatest new practice. Everyone is doing it these days, and with good reason. Using personas in the design process helps focus the design team's attention and efforts on the needs and challenges of realistic users, which in turn helps the team develop a more usable finished design. While completely imaginary personas will do, it seems only logical that personas based upon real user data will do better. Web analytics can provide a helpful starting point to generate data-backed personas; this article presents an informal 5-step process for building a "persona of the people."

Posted by jamesr at 10:05 PM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Design of a healthcare form

Jessica Enders has written an article on usability problems with healthcare questionnares. To quote:

Reviewing the 60 randomly selected forms this way, we were surprised to discover that every single form contained at least one error. Half of the patients made between 1 and 5 errors on their form, with the other half making 6 or more errors. The maximum number of errors made on a single form was 11.

Posted by jamesr at 05:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

What do innovative intranets look like?

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My presentation at the cmf2007 conference explored how to deliver an innovative intranet, sharing some winning examples from our recent Intranet Innovation Awards.

(The full details on the winners can be found in the Intranet Innovations 2007 report.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:20 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Planning & sustaining wiki-based collaboration projects

Maish Nichani has written an article on planning wiki-based collaboration. To quote:

Many organizations are experimenting with wiki-based collaboration projects. But only a small percentage of these projects make it past the initial excitement or pilot phase. One of the reasons for the drop-off is that there's not enough thought given to them other than deciding which wiki product to install. This article presents a framework that can help groups wanting to use wikis for internal projects better plan and sustain their collaboration efforts.

Posted by jamesr at 04:10 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets, Knowledge management

Sunset behind West Pier (VII)

Sunset behind West Pier (VII)

Last week I was in London, mostly working. I did get a chance to to have a day trip to Brighton, and there was superb weather (sunny and warm!). Spent time walking the waterfront, and enjoyed this sunset behind the remains of the West Pier.

Posted by jamesr at 08:11 PM
Categories: Photos

European awards ceremony

I held an awards ceremony this morning for the European winners of the Intranet Innovation Awards, at the start of the cmf2007 conference in Denmark.

This is a photo of the winners proudly showing off their etched glass awards, just before they had an opportunity to present their projects at the conference itself. The winners shown:

• Fiat Automobiles Group (Italy)
• Nycomed (Denmark/Switzerland)
• Environment Agency (UK)

Congratulations to all these winners! For me personally, it's wonderful to be able to hand over these awards face-to-face, and to chat with the well-deserved winners.

(Read more about the award winners)

Posted by jamesr at 10:16 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Start by 'gardening' collaboration

Collaboration tools have been used in organisations for a long time now, and the new generation of tools is spreading at an incredible rate. Tools are being deployed in parallel across many different business units, irrespective of any organisation-wide strategy or support.

A planned approach must therefore be taken to the management of collaboration tools within organisations. While it is left to a future article to outline a full strategic roadmap, the first step is to put in place a model of 'gardening'.

This must be done now, before the 'horse has bolted'. Any delay will leave much cleanup to be done after the fact.

Addressing collaboration challenges

This briefing is one of a number of articles published on managing collaboration within organisations.

The earlier article Collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing?, highlighted that while collaboration tools are great for meeting local and individual needs, they can be detrimental to organisation-wide knowledge sharing. Locking up all the content into small collaboration spaces can make it harder to find key information.

The article Successful collaboration requires support highlighted a range of resources that should be developed to help staff pick the right tools and make the best use of them. There also needs to be a central team who play a 'mentoring' role to the organisation, guiding the adoption and use of collaboration tools.

Gardening collaboration

Organisations should not stand in the way of collaboration, or create barriers to the adoption of collaboration tools. Equally, they should not stand by and let these tools spread without support or direction.

[CM Briefing 2007-21, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 07:26 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, James' articles

Successful collaboration requires support

Successful organisation-wide collaboration does not happen by chance. While the uptake of collaboration tools can be very rapid, some areas will use the tools well, while others will struggle (or fail).

Rolling out collaboration tools is not without its risks. As outlined in the earlier briefing Collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing?, the fragmentation of information can be greatly increased when the number of individual spaces grows.

Organisations must, however, support collaboration (and collaboration tools) as the need for these is great. This briefing outlines some practical steps that all organisations should take to help business areas and staff make the best use of collaboration tools.

Immediate support

The topic of how to make collaboration succeed is very broad, and one that is still being explored (and debated) within the community. With collaboration tools being rolled out as we speak, however, it is imperative to put in place some immediate support.

This briefing focuses on some very practical steps that can be taken to dispel some of the confusion surrounding collaboration tools and help staff use them successfully.

[CM Briefing 2007-20, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 07:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, James' articles

Establish a portfolio of collaboration tools

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for collaboration needs within an organisation. Individual teams and business areas will have very different behaviours and requirements, and this must be reflected in the collaboration tools that are put in place.

To fully meet an organisation's collaboration needs, a 'portfolio' approach should be taken. This involves providing a range of supported tools, and allowing each area to pick the functionality that they require.

This briefing explores the portfolio approach, and provides guidance on making it work in practice.

Different needs

There are many different situations within any organisation that fall under the heading of 'collaboration'. Common examples include:

• Team-based collaboration, where a small group of staff work on a single project or other ongoing task.
• Communication and collaboration between a geographically dispersed group of staff, such as a working group or community of practice.
• Collaborative creation of documentation.
• Teaching and e-learning spaces that support educational needs.
• Ongoing research projects, where researchers and other experts share information.

Each of these situations will require a unique mix of collaboration tools, processes and practices.

[CM Briefing 2007-19, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 07:07 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, James' articles

Connectors for dashboards and portals

Joe Lamantia continues his series on connectors for dashboards and portals. To quote:

The building block system includes several types of Connectors that make it possible for designers and architects to link the different areas of a Dashboard together via a consistent, easily understandable navigation model. The system also ensures the resulting information architecture can grow in response to changing needs and content. There's no special stacking hierarchy for the Connectors. However, they do have an official stacking size (most are size 3) in order to keep Dashboards constructed with the building blocks internally consistent.

Posted by jamesr at 07:02 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management