It seems like there is an assumption that if collaboration tools are deployed within an organisation, they will be instantly used by all staff in the most productive way possible. This is clearly not the case, a lesson that wasn’t learned from the era of Lotus Notes, and is presently being replicated in the current generation of tools.

This makes the new book by Michael Sampson, Collaboration Roadmap, particularly important. This is the latest masterwork from the undisputed thought leader in the collaboration space, and it provides an insightful view of how to make collaboration tools work.

The book starts by exploring the technology options, through the lens of Michael’s models, including the Seven Pillars and Four Connectors. These help to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different types of collaboration tools, and how they can potentially fit together.

Much of the rest of the book focuses on how to strategically approach deployment and adoption, starting with creating a compelling vision, through to governance and engagement.

Be warned though: this book will make you think. Michael’s greatest strength as an expert and author is creating models and frameworks for collaboration, and this book is packed with them. I would encourage most readers to dip into sections as required, and to use each model at the point of need to guide design and planning.

In short: there’s no other book like this. If want to do collaboration successfully, get this book.

This makes The Intranet Management Handbook by Martin White particularly important. While other books have focused on a specific aspect of intranets, such as Designing intranets, this book takes an overarching look at what is involved in making intranets work.

The Handbook is divided into four main sections:

• foundations
• technology
• operational planning
• governance and strategy

Each of these sections walks through key concepts, drawing in rich resources from across the globe.

The greatest strength of this work is its breadth. Martin is equally comfortable talking about SharePoint implementation issues and records management; job descriptions and privacy laws; personas and risk management.

This is where Martin’s extraordinary experience as an intranet expert really shines. There are few in the industry that can claim well over a decade of helping intranet teams succeed, and Martin draws on every bit of this expertise when writing this book.

For those new to intranets, this book is an invaluable roadmap for knowledge building and career development. Even experienced intranet managers will find valuable gems that will add to their repertoire. (Martin’s six-point ‘information charter’ is one such example.)

The Intranet Management Handbook should be on every intranet manager’s desk, and dipped into whenever fresh insight is required. Highly recommended.

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 talks about the universal nature of intranents, their less-than-loved status in most organistaions, and the need for a clear methodology to underpin site redesigns.

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 James present or read his blog posts, you will know he gives a clear view to help you – whether you agree with it or not.

James is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on intranets. He has used this experience to write this book.

Whether you are new to intranets or, like me, involved as an intranet manager for years, this book will be very useful to you.

This book will cover all you need to know to be able to create intranet sites that work. And it is the ‘sites that work’ words that make this book different to others. It is more than just a pleasing design. It is what else is needed to be researched, planned and created too that will make your time and effort better spent. Even more, you want the people using your intranet to get the best out of it. This book helps you to do just that!

Why not treat yourself? Read James’ book and help make your life easier and your intranet better by reading James’ book.

Mark Morrell, BT (UK)

Designing Intranets is Robertson’s second book, and the one I just finished. This is the book I’d been looking for all these years. It presents a step-by-step methodology for working though an intranet re-implementation, from IA to actual page design. It’s in-depth, well-written, and I would go so far as to say it’s the authoritative book in the field right now. If you’re looking to build or re-build from scratch, this is the book you want.

Deane Barker, Gadgetopia (USA)

(Order your copy now)

I started work on the book in March, and I’m just putting the finishing touches to it now. I’d already be finished, if it wasn’t for the incredible input I’ve received from folks around the globe.

I’m blessed with a network of wise and experienced professionals, so I sent out an early draft of the book for feedback. Based on the topic of the book, this included sending it to user experience professionals, as well as intranet folks.

I was deluged with amazing suggestions, ideas and improvements. So I’ve now spent another solid week of writing, working through all the comments. Curse you, reviewers!

The book is on track on going to the printers in early August, and then a release date shortly after that. Having just finished the changes, I wanted to give thanks first.

So thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to Gerry Gaffney, Catherine Grenfell, Lukas Karrer, Patrick Kennedy, Sam Marshall, Harry Max, Jane McConnell, Maish Nichani, Nic Price, Martin White and Andrew Wright.

Thanks also to all the intranet managers and intranet teams who have generously shared the many screenshots included in the book.

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 teams should know about. Definitely well spent dollars to beat the odds and lead your intranet to great success.

Lukas Karrer, Stimmt (Switzerland)

With such an ambitious title, the question automatically arises – what can a little book with 100 pages actually cover?

1. Will this book be able to answer all the questions regarding the intranet?
2. Will consultants become redundant in Intranet projects because of this book?
3. Will the book help to develop an intranet strategically and to optimize it?

After reading the book we can answer the first two questions with “yes and no.” Especially the answer to question 3 is a clear and convinced “Yes!”

James Robertson discusses all the issues that challenge intranet managers across continents and industries. Any organization discusses content, organization, design and the development of the intranet.. The author provides guidelines and remarkably short and stunning statements on each of these topics, e.g.:

• About the purpose of an intranet: Intranets have a clear goal: help staff do their jobs.
• About staff as sources for intranet optimization: Staff know an awful lot about the work they do, but they do not know a lot about intranet (nor do they need to!)
• About Intranet content: Not all content needs to be of equal quality.

Does this sound obvious? The popular usability book by Steve Krug is titled “Do not Make Me Think”. The intention of James Robertson is the exact opposite: he wants his readers to reflect on the intranet and its design.

This book will help intranet managers to concentrate on the most important intranet issues. Take advantage of the ideas from this book and you will get along your next intranet project with fewer days of external consultants. The advantage for consultants is that they can conduct meetings and projects with a clearer purpose and greater focus on really implementing measures – even if they can bill fewer hours. You no longer have to first clarify the conceptual understanding. Projects run smoother and are more fun.

Overall, the book provides a lot of media competence on the Intranet and embodies media competence in itself:

• it is clearly structured,
• it points to Internet content,
• it provides summaries for fast readers and
• important points are illustrated by graphics.

A “must read” for all intranet managers.

Jürgen Mirbach, ICOM (Germany)

Regardless of whether you are a seasoned Intranet Professional or just getting started with your first Intranet design, I highly recommend adding What Every Intranet Team Should Know by James Robertson of Step Two Designs to your library. At 110 pages, this handbook packs a wealth of valuable information into a quick-read offering a background understanding of the evolution of Intranets, guidance on identifying the needs of your organization, and useful tips on designing a solution that meets those needs.

Rather than trying to educate the reader on every possible situation that could be encountered in an Intranet build or redesign, Robertson focuses on sharing industry best practices and real-world experiences that the reader can easily adopt. Robertson’s straight-forward writing style, coupled with sample images and supporting graphics makes the content easy to understand and apply.

Although the book might appear small at first glance, Robertson proves that good things come in small packages by tackling complex issues such as requirements gathering, usability design, and governance. Each chapter provides clear, actionable steps while surfacing potential pitfalls and providing guidance on how to avoid them. Throughout the text, Robertson progressively lays out the fundamental concepts necessary to understand not only how to design an Intranet, but how to design one that your employees will actually use.

What Every Intranet Team Should Know has found a permanent place in my library and will become a must-read for those involved in current and future Intranet projects.

Sean R. Nicholson

If you need inspiration on structured ways of collecting data, I can strongly recommend Australian intranet guru James Robertson’s new book “What every intranet team should know” which is full of helpful methods for intranet and web teams alike.

Peter Erik Bang Nissen, J. Boye (Denmark)

By design, this book was very much “in the trenches”, focusing on getting teams started and working. What it didn’t cover was the bigger organisational picture. Thankfully Michael’s latest book does exactly that.

SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration is a slim volume, designed to give succinct advice on making SharePoint it a success across the whole organisation.

Michael has done a huge amount of thinking about SharePoint, and it shows. This is one of the most insightful resources of SharePoint published to date, and it’s unique in it’s business focus. This volume doesn’t get caught up in the technology, although it is informed by it. Instead, it looks at issues of governance, planning, purpose and engagement.

The core of the book focus on three main elements. The first is an incisive evaluation of SharePoint against Michael’s “7 pillars of collaboration”, showing clearly the platform’s strengths and weaknesses. The second is a clear overview of governance in the world of SharePoint. The third is a strategy for understanding the business, and gaining adoption.

Any organisation planning to deploy SharePoint should get this book. Anyone that has already rolled out SharePoint: it’s not too late! Better yet, get in touch with Michael himself, and get some help over the phone or in person.

CMS Watch, in partnership with Step Two Designs, today released Fundamentals of a Successful Intranet, the first online course to lay out best practices for intranet teams. Designed for both existing intranet managers and those planning a new enterprise intranet, the course outlines the business case for improvement, and then identifies key factors in delivering a successful intranet.

Almost every organisation has an intranet, providing access to key corporate knowledge, a channel for communication to all staff, and a gateway to enterprise systems. While many intranets are more than a decade old, they still struggle to realize their potential business value.

This online course has been created by James Robertson, a recognised global expert on intranet best practices. The course explains current state-of-the-art, as well as outlining emerging directions. Using real-world examples from around the globe, the course offers a strategy for delivering a successful intranet, as well as a straightforward approach to identifying practical improvements.

The course packs considerable amount of information into five hours, via digestible one-hour modules that speak to various professional needs:

• Intranet or web teams – learn current best-practices and justify improvements in clear business terms
• Communications and HR team members – obtain state-of-the-art intranet knowledge
• Intranet development project teams – prepare for the work ahead
• Enterprise and IT managers – better understand and support intranet teams and projects
• Consultants – apply global best practices to intranet-related services

[Full course information]

What every intranet team should know is the Tao Te Ching of intranet development material and I will always keep a copy of this book on my desk within immediate reach.

In this new book, James Robertson captures virtually every intranet development best practice in a clear and useful manner. I have spent hundreds of hours reading intranet blogs for good ideas and best practices, but this book captures all of it in one compact framework. Written in a highly usable and easily reference-able format, What every intranet team should know avoids technical and industry jargon, instead presenting good ideas in straight-forward language.

The book conveys practical and pragmatic wisdom and provides a complete road map for effective intranet building. Use the clearly targeted chapters to assess your current intranet, discover user and business needs, plan intranet improvements, build a highly useful site structure, provide useful content, streamline specific business processes and avoid the common pitfalls of weak intranet development approaches.

I recommend this book to intranet professionals who are really serious about providing real value to their businesses and helping staff do their jobs better. Keep a copy on your desk and return to its pages regularly.

Ephraim Julius Freed, Intranet Manager, Oxfam America (USA)

James Robertson, founder of Step Two Designs, has written the missing intranet book. What every intranet team should know is a practical, reassuring handbook that will make every new intranet manager feel they now know what they have to do. At last, it’s all in one place!

Experienced intranet managers will find it to be a fast, efficient review of everything they know they should know but sometimes neglect. A “checklist” book that is clearly worth it’s price at US$ 89!

Jane McConnell, NetStrategy/JMC (France)

The idea of having a team to manage and sustain the intranet still raises eyebrows. It was not that long ago that the intranet had the same position in the organisation as the e-mail exchange server — a tool from the IT department that needs little intervention. Hopefully all this is changing. But this change also means that the organisation has to deal with skills gaps. They either have to groom internal talent or source talent from the industry. Both are frustrating affairs when you don’t know what you’re dealing with. This is where James Robertson’s book, What every intranet team should know, shines.

I was consulting for an intranet redesign when James announced his book. I ordered multiple copies immediately. I gave one copy to the client’s project team and I’m happy to say that the conversations are at a higher level these days — more focused on action rather than on conceptual understanding.

Many of the ideas that James presents in his book are ideas that he’s already touched upon in his resourceful blog, Column Two. However, having all these ideas arranged for a quick read, and in fine print I must add, is quite priceless. It just works better.

So if you want to have more focused conversations with your clients or stakeholders around intranet management, just grab a copy of this book and give it to them.

Maish Nichani, Pebble Road (Singapore)

The book is beautiful … it’s beautifully printed (now that I know about such things!), it’s easy to read (lots of white space), it’s got easy-to-engage-with pictures and diagrams throughout, and the content itself is good. It’s the sort of book that you buy and give to others who don’t know what you do … whether they are your manager or spouse (hat tip, Dorje for that piece of intelligence). It provides a concise overview of the role of the intranet, the intranet team, and the various activities that go into making the intranet valuable. For all of these reasons, the book is a great and highly recommended addition to your intranet bookshelf, or to the justification within your firm about what you do.

Michael Sampson (New Zealand)

James Robertson has written a straightforward and useful guide to intranet teams. Follow his clear recommendations and you are well on your way to unleashing any untapped intranet potential.

Don’t let intranets be governed by chance and fickle management. Adapt the James Robertson methodologies and gain from his advice for a structured and sensible approach to successful intranet development”

Anette Wittenberg, IntraTeam A/S (Denmark)

As any Intranet Manager knows only too well there are few silver bullets to achieving effectiveness. That said, however, after some twenty years of praxis in the field of Intranet design there are emergent guidelines – some might say “best practices” – for achieving success in what is a graveyard slot in web solution design.

Quite simply, Robertson’s (and his colleagues) book is excellent, and quite unique in the field. Without going into detail, the material is based on a summation of his company’s ongoing work in providing practical consulting advice on Intranets to a wide range of companies. What’s gratifying about the book is that within this slim volume there is gold which can only be found by working on the front line.

Rob Tarling (UK)

“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 senior managers who still (amazingly) do not understand the benefits of investing in an intranet team.”

Martin White

“What’s been missing is the big picture, the integrated view, a simple approach to a complex job, presented in one easily comprehended sweep. This book, in just over a hundred beautifully clear pages, provides just that. James Robertson writes like the intranets he advocates: the book is direct, clean, attractive, simple – and above all, useful.”

Patrick Lambe

Read the full reviews

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 of intranets, and beyond. While these have proven to be very useful for intranet teams, what we hadn’t done was pull together all this information into a single volume. Until now.

The only book of its type in the world, What every intranet team should know provides a succinct overview of managing and growing intranets. A must-have for every intranet team, whether just starting or looking for fresh ideas.

This is the definitive ‘quick start’ guide to intranets, providing intranet teams with a to-the-point overview of how to plan, design, manage and grow intranets.

For the first time, we’ve released this volume as a beautifully printed A5-sized 110-page book. This is available via Lulu internationally, and directly from us if you’re based in Australia (we’re surrounded by boxes of books).

I’ll be very interested to hear what everyone thinks about this book!

More information

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. It cuts through the vendor-driven hype around the latest features, and presents a measured approach to understanding and designing search. It is a must for all intranet, web, information management and IT teams who have been tasked with delivering search that works.

The book starts by exploring what is meant by “enterprise search”, and sensibly draws a broad boundary. An overview of the search marketplace also sheds light on the often confusing overlap of products and features.

A lot of meat is then provided on how search works, advanced functionality, and the complexities of security and multilingual support. These sections are worth the price of the book alone, as it is extremely difficult to uncover clear vendor-neutral information on these topics.

Not content to leave it there, the book then outlines a solid methodology for selecting and implementing a search engine, drawing upon the extensive professional experience of the authors. The book concludes with an exploration of search engine design, usability and management.

Both authors have been prolific writers on the topic of search, but this is their best work yet. Highly recommended.

Score: 9/10

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, and can often be daunting for project teams. Teams may also not have the necessary people and planning skills to fully benefit from collaborative approaches.

This book addresses both these issues in a unique way.

The first aspect of the book provides step-by-step instructions on using SharePoint for team-based collaboration. Starting from setting up the initial team spaces, Michael walks through configuring the tools for best effect, how to use notifications, the role of blogs and wikis, and much more.

The other aspect looks at how to manage team collaboration from a people and process perspective. Injecting his unique perspectives on how teams should work together, Michael provides an underlying narrative that describes the lifecycle of typical project.

The connection between the technology and people makes this book particularly valuable for business teams (the target for this book, rather than the typical IT audience). Many challenges remain for project teams to learn new collaboration skills, but this book provides a solid foundation for ongoing cultural change.

Overall, highly recommended, and required reading for any organisation planning to roll out a tool like SharePoint (or equivalent) for team collaboration.

Score: 8/10

What we can say is this: SharePoint has big strengths and weaknesses, and organisations should inform themselves before purchasing or deploying the solution. This will allow them to maximise their benefits, and mitigate the weaknesses.

One of the best ways of acquiring this vital knowledge is through the purchase of The SharePoint Report from CMS Watch. This is packed with detailed information on all aspects of SharePoint, written in the same pragmatic and fearless style as all CMS Watch’s reports.

A range of core scenarios are explored, including:

• collaboration
• enterprise content management
• portal
• business intelligence platform
• forms processing
• application development
• search

In each of these areas, strengths and weaknesses of SharePoint are outlined. Key advice is given for prospective SharePoint purchasers, along with a discussion of governance, management and customisation.

I have a huge respect for the folks at CMS Watch, and can unreservedly recommend this report. A site licence is US$2,950. Considering the costs involved in SharePoint, this will be the smallest investment you’ll make, for the biggest return.

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 with delivering things in a way that drives the unique strengths of the organisation. Equally importantly, you will only get the best possible staff when your desired “strange workforce” is under-appreciated by your competitors.

This book makes a strong and reasoned case for this unusual perspective on workforce management, and it is underpinned by a solid basis of HR strategy. In the times when organisations are looking to innovation to generate success, the message of this book is timely and important.

All that being said, this book does feel like it was written in a hurry. Perhaps most frustrating is the US-centric language and examples used throughout. The informal style of writing includes expressions such as “put the hurtin’ on your competitors”, which I fear will be mysterious to many international readers.

One of the central examples used is also the differing strategies of two baseball teams, not easy to follow if you don’t know how the game is actually played. (We play “football” and “soccer” in this part of the world, called “rugby” and “football” elsewhere.) Other examples also feel a little thin to strongly support the central arguments of the book.

Still, the first edition of this book still holds enough value to warrant the price of purchase. I look forward to a thicker, more solid and better edited second edition. This, I think, will be a truly great book.

Score: 6/10