I’ve just finished my first day at Caloundra City Council, up here in sunny Queensland. As ever, it’s tremendously interesting to learn about a new organisation, and the unique challenges facing it.

Already, the project plan has shifted somewhat. Instead of spending the coming two days working through an expert review of the intranet, I’ll be devoted soley to stakeholder interviews. This makes a total of five full days consisting soley of interviews, in response to a desire by the project sponsors to involve all the key people (which is not a bad goal, by any means).

This time around, I’m interviewing more senior management than I’ve done in the past, and I had to come up with a new set of questions. These are very different to my normal questions, and have ended up as follows:

Questions for the CEO (30 mins):

• What is the high-level strategic direction of the Council?
• How can the intranet assist in meeting these goals?
• What are the challenges facing the Council, both internal (eg. cultural, etc) and external (eg. economic, etc)?
• How can the intranet help in resolving these issues?
• What do you see as the key drivers and requirements for the intranet?
• What do you want the intranet to deliver in the next 12 months?

Questions for senior management (30 mins – 1 hour):

• What is the strategic direction of your division?
• How can the intranet assist in meeting these goals?
• What are the challenges facing your division?
• How can the intranet help in resolving these issues?
• What are your key requirements for the intranet?
• What are the major information resources maintained by your division?
• What do you want the intranet to deliver in the next 12 months?
• What role do you want your division to play in creating and maintaining the intranet?

You thoughts or suggestions on this?