Redesigning a well-established intranet involves major cultural change. For anything beyond the smallest of tweaks or incremental changes, reshaping the intranet will have an impact on business areas, content owners, authors, and end users (staff).

One of the most common mistakes made by intranet teams is to push forward on site redesigns without gaining the necessary support. Worse, some teams fail to even recognise the scale of support needed, and are brought sharply to a halt by unmanaged stakeholder and staff issues.

Even when the organisation as a whole recognises that the current intranet is broken, considerable on-the-ground support will be required to make the necessary changes. Without this, the redesign project will proceed slowly and fitfully.

At the outset of any major project, intranet teams must spend time and effort building support for the work ahead.

Impact of change

A major redesign project will impact every aspect of an intranet, including:

• overall site structure and design
• content ownership and management
• authoring and publishing processes
• resources and responsibilities
• technology and infrastructure
• day-to-day use by staff

These changes will be disruptive for many, and may reduce productivity and familiarity in the short term. Migrating content to the new site, with new publishing models, will also require considerable effort and time.

[CM Briefing 2010-10, read the full article]