Collaboration and social tools are becoming the "new normal" within organisations, sitting alongside established corporate platforms such as the intranet. Yet while the technology is becoming widespread, there is strangely little discussion about how to ensure adoption and success. It seems like there is an assumption that if collaboration tools are ...
Blog category: Book & product reviews
March 23, 2011
Book review: The Intranet Management Handbook
There are over a million intranets in the world according to Martin White, and I have no reason to doubt it. The field of intranet management is large and active, but surprisingly weak on professional resources. Considering that intranets have been ...
Tags: Intranets
November 29, 2010
Why I wrote “Designing intranets: creating sites that work”
When I was in Stockholm recently, Kurt Sorensen from IntraTeam trapped me in front of a video camera, and asked me a few questions. One was: "why did you write Designing Intranets?" My response ...
Tags: book, designing intranets
October 21, 2010
Nice comments on Designing intranets
Now that Designing intranets: creating sites that work is reaching destinations far distant from Australia, some nice comments are starting to come in: I have just finished reading ‘Designing intranets – Creating sites that work’, the latest book written by James Robertson. For those of you who have seen ...
Tags: designing intranets, reviews
July 12, 2010
Cursing my book reviewers (in a good way)
Many readers of this blog, and followers of my Twitter account, will be aware that I've been writing a new book. This will hopefully be the textbook for intranet teams tackling intranet design or redesign projects, and I can reveal that it will be called Designing intranets: creating sites that ...
October 16, 2009
More feedback on “What every intranet team should know”
In the last week I've had a few more reviews and comments come in on What every intranet team should know: Successful intranets don't happen by accident. James Robertson, Intranet Guru and founder of Step Two Designs has combined 10 years of experience into 110 pages covering topics every intranet ...
August 2, 2009
Book review: SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration
Michael Sampson's first book, Seamless Teamwork, was a masterpiece of step-by-step instructions for teams using SharePoint. Working from a very practical starting point, it gave teams clear instructions on which elements of SharePoint to use, and how. By design, this book was very much "in the trenches", focusing on getting ...
Tags: Collaboration, roadmap
July 16, 2009
Partnership delivers first online education on enterprise intranets
We have spent the last decade examining the practices of intranet teams, with the goal of uncovering and sharing what works (and what doesn’t). For the first time, there is a now a full online training course that gives you access to this latest thinking on intranet strategy and management. CMS ...
Tags: course, Intranets, management, strategy, training
July 10, 2009
More reviews of “What every intranet team should know”
My latest book, What every intranet team should know, has generated a great buzz, perhaps due to the stripy cover! It seems that the contents are also proving valuable, and we've had a few new reviews in the last week or two: What every intranet team should know is the ...
Tags: Intranets
June 1, 2009
First book reviews are in
I'm pleased to share the first reviews of What every intranet team should know. At a glance: "Every intranet manager (and quite a few consultants!) will benefit from this book. It is an exceptional contribution to the development of excellent intranets, and also an invaluable book to give to those ...
Tags: Intranets
May 18, 2009
New book: What every intranet team should know
This blog has been a bit quiet over the last few months due to some hard work on two seriously exciting projects. The first is a new book, released today. Over the last eight years, we've published 200+ articles covering every aspect ...
Tags: book, content, design, Intranets, management, strategy
April 3, 2009
Review: Successful Enterprise Search Management
Successful Enterprise Search ManagementStephen E. Arnold and Martin White Every survey has shown that search causes considerable frustration within organisations. As the volume of information grows exponentially, so does the difficulty of delivering an effective search, and user dissatisfaction is reaching record levels. This book therefore comes just in time. ...
Tags: search
December 15, 2008
Book review: Seamless Teamwork
Seamless TeamworkMichael Sampson Team-based collaboration is now a key part of project delivery in many organisations. Despite this, success can be hit-and-miss, with some teams prospering and others not. Tools such as SharePoint are spreading rapidly through organisations. While these can bring significant new capabilities, they are not simple tools, ...
Tags: Collaboration
November 21, 2008
The SharePoint Report
We've been working with a good number of organisations on strategies for their SharePoint-based intranets. While this has allowed us to build up a solid body of knowledge on SharePoint, our strictly vendor-neutral role prevents us from publishing publicly on it (or on any other product for that matter). What we ...
January 21, 2008
Book review: Change to Strange
Change to Strange Create a great organization by building a strange workforce Daniel M. Cable The core idea at the heart of this book is very powerful: if you want to create an extraordinary organisation, you won't achieve it with an ordinary workforce. Instead, you will need staff who are "strange", obsessed ...
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January 6, 2008
Book review: Strategy and the Fat Smoker
Strategy and the Fat Smoker David Maister, 2008 David Maister is the undisputed guru of professional services firms, and this is his greatest work yet. The premise is very simple: every professional firm has much the same vision, strategy and operating principles. Yet few firms ever deliver on these promises. This is ...
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August 19, 2007
Book review: The Myths of Innovation
I've just had my book review of The Myths of Innovation published on Boxes and Arrows. To quote: Innovation is a hot topic at the moment. Actually, innovation has been a big thing for last hundred years or more, but perhaps we needed the profusion of business magazines and books ...
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July 2, 2007
Book review: Organising Knowledge — Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness
Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness Patrick Lambe, 2007 Taxonomies are often surrounded by an air of reverence and mystique. Traditionally seen as the domain of librarians, recordkeepers and botanists, they are now hot property in business circles, but no better understood. Patrick Lambe's book sets out to systematically address these issues, ...
February 3, 2007
Book review: The User is Always Right
The User is Always Right:A practical guide to creating and using personas for the webSteve Mulder and Ziv Yaar This is a book drawn from the experience of having created many personas for a wide range of different organisations. More than that, the authors have clearly been creating great personas ...
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March 25, 2005
Book review: The Heart of Change
The Heart of ChangeJohn P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen Before starting to review this title, I'm going to go back to the earlier title that outlined the fundamental change process advocated by John Kotter: Leading Change. My review of this highlighted the practical value of this book, ...
March 19, 2005
Book review: What’s the Big Idea?
What's the Big Idea?Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak The concept of this book is a fascinating one. Rather than just looking at a single "great idea", it explores the "marketplace of great ideas", investigating what makes a good idea, how to select these ideas, and how best to put them ...
February 17, 2005
Book review: The Content Management Handbook
The Content Management HandbookMartin White The best thing about the Content Management Handbook is that it provides something that has been missing for some time: a simple and clear overview of the whole field of content management. While other books have delved in-depth into specific aspects of content management, Martin ...
September 8, 2004
Book review: The E-Myth Revisited
The E-Myth RevisitedMichael E. Gerber This was one of the books on my reading list with the aim of continuing to improve the way Step Two Designs operates. As a small business, there is the ever-present challenge of managing our current operations, while positioning ourselves for further growth. This book started well, ...
August 15, 2004
Book review: Leading Change
Leading ChangeJohn P. Kotter It is widely recognised that organisations are under greater pressure than ever before to adapt to meet new conditions and challenges within their marketplaces. This has spawned many change management projects, reorganisations and strategic realignments. Most of these have failed. This book takes a much-needed look at ...
February 29, 2004
Book review: Observing the User Experience
Observing the User Experience Mike Kuniavsky This is a book I definitely enjoyed reading. More importantly, it provides a practical and pragmatic perspective on how to research user needs, in the context of a broader user-centred design process. I would certainly recommend it to anyone new to the field of usability techniques. The ...
July 29, 2003
Book review: Information architecture, blueprints for the web
Information architecture Blueprints for the web Christina Wodtke Christina is the founder of boxesandarrows, the best information architecture (IA) resource site on the web. My thanks go to her for creating this site, and also for writing this very useful book. Right from the outset, Christina makes it clear that this book isn't ...
July 27, 2003
Book review: Practical Intranet Development
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 ...
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April 18, 2003
Book review: paper prototyping
Jakob Nielsen is back on form with a review and commentary on paper prototyping. To quote: Paper prototyping isn't used because people don't think they will get enough information from a method that is so simple and so cheap. It feels like you're cheating if you attempt to improve your ...
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March 10, 2003
Book review: Web Content Management, A Collaborative Approach
Web Content ManagementA Collaborative ApproachRussell Nakano It has been said that this book presents content management the "Interwoven way". This is not surprising, considering the author was the co-founder and key designer of the Interwoven TeamSite CMS. This, in itself, is not an issue if the book presents technology-neutral insight into ...
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February 2, 2003
Review: Using Narrative in Organisational Change
A while ago, I was sent a review copy of a multimedia CD titled Using Narrative in Organisational Change, containing a full day masterclass by David Snowden of the IBM Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity. This is a full multimedia presentation that explores the knowledge management approach known as storytelling. ...
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February 2, 2003
Book review: Content Management Systems
Published by Glasshaus, Content Management Systems (Dave Addey, James Ellis, Phil Suh & David Thiemecke) is very much written by web developers for web developers. The casual, coloquial style of writing should appeal to those readers looking for the real information, without all the hype or jargon. The book starts by ...
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October 16, 2002
Review: The Knowledge Management Fieldbook
I have finally finished reading The Knowledge Management Fieldbook by Wendi R. Bukowitz and Ruth L. Williams. Yes, this book has been out for quite a while now (published 2000), but I have had other things on my reading list. This book provides an introduction to the many different knowledge management ...
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October 3, 2002
Martin White’s review of the Polar Bear book
Martin White has written a brief review of the new edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. To quote: Recently I have recommended a number of intranet-related handbooks, but if I had to have just one book in my consulting briefcase it would be this one. The authors ...
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October 1, 2002
A review of “Content Management Systems”
Paola DI MAIO has written a review of the recently-released title Content Management Systems. To quote: Overall, the book tackles crucial technical issues that anyone involved in a CMS must face, but the pitch is accessible to most readers interested in the highly complex , and highly fascinating world of ...
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