Book review: Practical Intranet Development
Categorised under: Book & product reviews, Intranets
Practical Intranet Development
John Colby, et al
This book suffers seriously from a case of split personality. While the importance of non-technical (people) issues is highlighted throughout, it remains a book written by techies for techies.
This book seems to propagate the attitude that users are a difficult factor in the project, to be managed as best as possible. For example, in on chapter, it takes about “making the users feel like they are involved in the design process”. Why not actually involve them? Instead, there is the sense of resignation that users will introduce complexities into an otherwise simple project.
Few of the important issues are covered in depth, and instead, the reader is presented with much information that is better found in other books. For example, there is a whole chapter on browser compatability and another just on generic security guidelines. Much of this looks like it has been taken from materials discussing websites, and it is out of place in a book solely on intranets.
This book also suffers from having so many authors (9), with each being given one or two chapters to write, in isolation. As an example, Inigo Surguy presents a reasonable overview of usability, information architecture, and user-centred design principles. Unfortunately, this was completely lost on Jeffrey Haas who wrote the “Development Techniques” chapter, presenting a very “traditional” view of project management and application development.
Overall, this book provides a reasonable overview of the various aspects of intranet development, and does at least highlight the challenges. Unfortunatley, few real solutions are presented, and the book is considerably weakened by its obsession with technology products and issues.
(Disclaimer: I was to write several of the chapters of this book, on content management systems, and marketing the intranet. Unfortunately, I was too busy to be able to make the tight deadlines, and the work was handed across to others.)
Overall rating: 3/10
James Robertson is the Managing Director of 