Articles by Month: December 2007

Twelve Predictions for 2008

CMS Watch has published their twelve predictions for 2008. To quote:

It's that time of year again. The CMS Watch analyst team ponders what to expect next year, and offers 12 predictions that we think will shape content technologies in 2008.

Posted by jamesr at 12:32 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Is Facebook in the enterprise an oxymoron?

Tony Byrne has written an article on Facebook as an enterprise solution. To quote:

The dramatic rise of Facebook among professionals has called the question on "Enterprise 2.0" long before many people were ready or able to confront it. Some enterprises block Facebook.com on their networks. Others have embraced Facebook as their Intranet. Most others remain ignorant of the phenomenon, but probably not for long. Facebook is more than a website though. It's a byproduct of a broader phenomenon. Enterprises should embrace the concepts behind it, but not fall head over heels for any platform that isn't authentically embraced by rank-and-file employees.

There are many wise words in this article, and it should definitely be read by anyone rushing into the idea of "Facebook as the intranet". To Tony's points, I would also add the following:

What about the content?

While Facebook recognises that relationships exist between people, something that most enterprise solutions have failed to do, there still remains the "content" needed by staff.

Do we really see HR policies being copied onto Facebook and somehow propagated virally as Facebook apps? Are we going to use Facebook to submit expense claims? Of course not. Yet, this is seems to be the argument presented by those who ask "why would anyone still be doing intranet 1.0?"

The reality is that there is a much richer information ecosystem than just relationships (Facebook) or content (intranets), and we need both. "Facebook as the intranet" is therefore simplistic at best, or misleading at worst.

Posted by jamesr at 12:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Intranet resources: numbers, "way of working", what next with 2.0?

Jane McConnell has written a post on the size of intranet teams, in comparison to the overall size of the organisations they serve. To quote:

The third source is my own Global Intranet Survey of 2007 where I reached the average of 1 headcount for 2,300 employees. This is based on data per size category going up to very large organisations of over 100,000 people. When I look at the smaller sizes within the survey population, the figures are similar to StepTwo and IntraTeam.

Posted by jamesr at 12:05 PM | Permalink
Categories:

A holiday CMS wishlist

Tony Byrne has published his holiday wishlist for CMS products. To quote:

• A broad set of plain old java objects for core content technology services (to run in any of our favored JVMs), which we can deploy independently of each other on an a' la carte basis to create our own custom content applications
• XHTML-compliant and WCAG-friendly application UIs

Posted by jamesr at 05:25 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Promote intranet successes

As discussed in the earlier article Every intranet has its successes, there are few intranet teams who are not steadily delivering valuable improvements to their sites.

Despite this, many intranet teams are almost invisible within their organisations, with little recognition for the new enhancements and functionality they have delivered.

This must change, if intranet teams are to obtain the resources and support they need. Part of the solution is for intranet teams to be more proactive and effective in communicating their successes.

This briefing outlines a number of practical ways of promoting success stories, drawn from the real-life approaches taken by intranet teams across a variety of organisations.

Track successes

The first step is for intranet teams to be more disciplined in tracking intranet changes and new functionality. At the simplest level, this could just be a document listing the improvements in each month.

Even this simple document can be very effective at communicating to management (and the broader group of stakeholders) what the intranet team 'has actually been doing'.

This type of tracking also demonstrates the volume of work that is done by the intranet team, which is important when justifying existing team resources, or requesting additional staff.

[CM Briefing 2007-23, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 02:04 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles

Collaboration is about people

A number of articles have recently been published on collaboration. Focusing on collaboration tools, these articles have explored when they work, the challenges involved and how to avoid these problems in practice.

In many ways, these articles have taken for granted the central aspect of collaboration: the people involved. This article will explore the human face of collaboration, touching upon a range of enterprise considerations.

Collaboration can't be forced

It make no sense to roll out collaboration tools to the whole organisation. Collaboration takes place between people, and can't be forced or created through the use of technology.

While it is possible to create new opportunities for collaboration using online tools, this is slow and hard, and not the best approach when implementing collaboration tools for the first time.

Instead, collaboration tools work best when they support existing collaboration taking place between individuals or groups within the organisation.

For example, regular meetings may be held between line managers to discuss quality assurance problems. A collaboration space can be a valuable support for discussions that are held during these regular (face-to-face) meetings.

Pilot collaboration projects should therefore seek out areas where there is a demand for tools to support existing groups or communities.

[CM Briefing 2007-22, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 01:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, James' articles, Knowledge management

The many faces of information architecture

A lot of confusion and misunderstanding surrounds the term 'information architecture'. The multitude of activities that can be labelled with these two words span a vast variety of people, skills and situations.

If you ask for an information architecture, what exactly are you going to receive in return?

Similarly, if someone tells you they are going to provide you with an information architecture, for a website or intranet for example, what exactly does that mean?

A primer, not a dictionary

This paper aims to explain the many faces of information architecture.

A precise definition of each term would be difficult, as there is still much debate even among the professionals who practice in this field, and that is not the objective here.

What is needed is a primer to help ordinary humans weave their way through the various labels that might be used to describe work related to information architecture.

To engage consultants or contractors, it is useful to understand the variety of terminology and be able to identify the area (or areas) in which you need assistance.

Similarly, consultants should find it helpful to be able to express, with a fair degree of certainty and precision, what area (or areas) they are able to provide services in.

[December KM Column written by Patrick Kennedy, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 01:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

Fiat: "Avanti e Veloci" portal

Following on from the earlier Environment Agency video, we now have an interview with the Platinum Award winners of the Intranet Innovation Awards. Fiat Automobiles won the main award for creating a web portal that helped to turn around the fortunes of the whole business. The numbers speak for themselves: from a 2 million euro loss per day, to a 5 million euro profit per day!

This 5:45 minute video covers:

• screenshots of the portal
• design of the portal
• the most successful aspects of the project
• lessons learnt

(For full details on this extraordinary case study, obtain a copy of the Intranet Innovations 2007 report.)

Posted by jamesr at 02:12 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Environment Agency: Personas Pack

The winners of the inaugural Intranet Innovation Awards were announced in November 2007. As it turned out, I was able to hand over most of the trophies in person as part of my recent Europe/US trip, which was wonderful. It also gave me a chance to record interviews with a number of the winning teams, and the first of these is now finished.

This is a video interview with the Gold Award winning team from Environment Agency (UK), sharing details on their remarkable "personas pack". The 7.5 minute video will share:

• creating the personas
• why personas?
• packaging the personas
• using the personas
• lessons learnt

(For full details on this award winning work, obtain a copy of the Intranet Innovations 2007 report.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Usability is not a verb

Scott Berkun has written that usability is not a verb. To quote:

I started my career in usability, but switched within a year for a management role on the same project. Why? I realized that usability is not a verb. For all the data and advice I gave my smart team, I was dependent on them to make decisions. I realized my effectiveness in the cause of ease of use would improve dramatically by taking a management role on the development team, rather than an advisory one.

Posted by jamesr at 07:03 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Building enterprise 2.0 on culture 1.0

Nathan Wallace gives us another great update on JCintranet, the intranet built as a wiki. To quote:

Over 18 months, JCintra amassed 23,335 content contributions from 239 (~70%) people. The number of contributions per month continues to increase steadily. But, JCintra continues to function as an incredibly easy to use Intranet, rather than as a genuine Wiki. In fact, 85% of our 3000 pages only have one contributing author. (Interestingly, this behaviour occurs even at Atlassian, who build Wiki software as their business!)

Posted by jamesr at 06:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Social networks study released - MySpace & Facebook are different after all!

faberNovel Consulting has released a paper on social networks, reposted on Read/WriteWeb. To quote:

faberNovel Consulting has released a research paper on social networks. The paper is an excellent theoretical overview of social networks and the trends in this important market. I particularly liked the following two slides, showing the types of social networks and how they're positioned. Interesting that in terms of identity, Facebook and MySpace are at opposite ends of the spectrum - Facebook is viewed as "real identity", whereas MySpace is "fanntasized identity"! The whole set of slides is below, via Slideshare.

Posted by jamesr at 06:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge management

Walking up the taxonomy tree at the BBC

Martin Belam has, in the process of writing about some past search problems, explains the search taxonomy at BBC. To quote:

This worked brilliantly, and looked very, very clever on the front-end. So, in 2001 on the BBC's site search, if you searched for 'Seth Johnson', Bromsgrove found the 'Seth Johnson' node, saw there was no URL, walked up the tree and found 'Derby County'. The results returned would then have a best link to BBC Sport's coverage of Derby County at #1. It gave the impression to the user that the search engine understood that Seth Johnson was a Derby County player, and also was probably the best result given the quality of some of the site search results at the time.

Posted by jamesr at 05:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools

All universities are equal...

Adriaan Bloem has written a post about university websites. To quote:

Usually, where universities come from is the same: academia was among the early adopters of the nascent technology and many ventured out on the web in the early nineties. With the archipelago of departments, institutes, faculties, over a decade many managed to produce hundreds of thousands or sometimes millions of published web pages. Often using different styles, editors, webservers, then CMS tools -- it's not uncommon to find hundreds of (sub)domains within a single institution.

We've been doing a lot of work with universities over the last year or so, and have observed all of the same issues and challenges. After a while, we worked out that universities are uniquely challenging environments because they are the only place that doesn't have a shared sense of corporate identity. You don't work for the university, you work for the School of Dentistry.

We're now seeing university web strategy projects as a piece of organisational change, not as "create a document" projects. I think there's some valuable progress to be made via this approach, but we're still in the early stages of exploring what it means in practice...

Posted by jamesr at 05:55 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information architecture, Web development

Content approval workflow for the intranet

Simon Goh asks: do we need workflow for intranets? To quote:

In my opinion, organisations need to adopt an open culture towards the sharing of information. A culture that permits mistakes and then improvements as a collective organisation. And in an Intranet environment, this means no content approval workflow.

I agree completely with this, and I think a well-used intranet where mistakes are quickly corrected is more effective than a rigid pre-publishing approval process.

Posted by jamesr at 07:19 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

The five competencies of user experience design

Steve Psomas has listed five competencies of user experience design. To quote:

This framework comprises the competencies a UX professional or team requires. The following sections describe these five competencies, outline some questions each competency must answer, and show the groundwork and deliverables for which each competency is responsible.

Posted by jamesr at 07:16 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

2007 Global Intranet Survey

Jane McConnell has released the results of the 2007 Global Intranets Survey. This is a magnificent piece of work, and one that possibly sheds more light on the 'state of the nation' of intranets more than any other report, survey or research.

Drawing on the experiences of 178 organisations, this research focuses specifically on the challenges of large and complex intranets. Jane is the recognised guru of 'global intranets', and this shines through in this work. So many questions are asked and answered, including:

• number of languages used on intranets
• types and strengths of information flows
• employee perceptions of the intranet
• overall structure of intranets
• prevalence of portal solutions
• applications deployed on intranets
• strategic drivers
• decision-making processes
• global vs local operations
• publishing tools used
• adoption of collaboration and web 2.0
• ... and much, much more

These survey results should be obtained by any organisation wrestling with the future of their intranet, or looking for benchmarking against other businesses. Shining light on the often-hidden world of intranets, the Global Intranets Survey is sure to become the standard reference for all intranet teams.

This year, Jane has published the results in two parts. An overall "Trends" report (US$525) provides 95 pages of insight from the survey. A more detailed "Analysis" report (US$1175) expands on that to give 183 pages of detailed information, including a senior management assessment worksheet.

These reports are worth every cent, and I would commend them to every intranet team.

Posted by jamesr at 10:41 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

What the Google intranet looks like

Philipp Lenssen and Tony Ruscoe have posted a few tidbits about the Google intranet. To quote:

What do around 16,000 Google employees stare at in the morning when they’ve arrived at the office? They might be looking at Moma, the name for the Google intranet. The meaning of the name of “Moma” is a mystery even to some of the employees working on it, we heard, but Moma’s mission is prominently displayed on its footer: “Organize Google’s information and make it accessible and useful to Googlers.”

Needless to say, this has generated a bit of discussion on the blogosphere:

• "We can only imagine what kind of information about genetic cataloging, brain implants and the search for sustainable energy sources in outer space are displayed on these pages. I kid, it's probably fairly mundane. I'm sure Larry and Sergey have an entirely different interface for all the really creepy stuff, like the most damning images captured by the Google Street View car." (Read/Write Web)
• "On a side note... Lessen & Roscoe say that a lot of Google employees don’t use Google’s own social networking site, and instead prefer to use Facebook…. Oh well, follow the leader" (Toby Ward)
• "A good "investigative" piece more so then an in depth look at how an intranet is used in an enterprise, but i guess it is always hard not to sensationalize the internal workings of Google." (Daniela Barbosa)

Posted by jamesr at 08:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Introduction to Communities of Practice

Patrick Lambe has shared a superb video which explains communities of practice. To quote:

This is the second in a series of three recent workshops on different approaches to getting knowledge transfer going in your organisation. This one is an introduction to Communities of Practice.

I think Patrick is incredibly generous in sharing this type of material, and I look forward to future videos. If only the rest of us managed to share this type of information...

Posted by jamesr at 08:02 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management