IntranetBlogs

Social business is nothing new

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:08:52 GMT

(SAN JOSE, CA) “Digital work became more social… but work has always been social,” says Thomas Vander Wal, InfoCloud Solutions, addressing the KM World 2009 conference. “Businesses by nature are social – you need to have people in your org talking to each other.”

Drivers of social media and enterprise 2.0 include:

Office productivity tools are not efficient for collaboration.
Social tools augment face-to-face.
Volume of information has grown
Gaps in enterprise tools, CMS, and other traditional work tools
Individuals are making a difference
Ease of sharing & connecting with others
Easier knowledge capture

“All of this is similar to e-mail in the 1990s. It was a strange new way of thinking… and now we’re using social tools and saying the same things that we did about email.”

“Social software creates a lot of information – many layers of information. We need tools to understand this information and structure for understanding.”

1–9–90 rule (Charlene Li) helps understand the ‘who’ in social media: 1% creates the information; 9% curates it; 90% merely are consumers of the information.

SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE INTRANET

“We’re looking at our intranet and it’s an utter mess. Something is really broken here,” says Thomas, emulating a typical intranet client. “Social media helps fill in some of the gaps in the enterprise tools (example: BBC intranet: 115% wiki use in 7 years)”

When comparing Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 Vander Wal has a clever analogy: Web 2.0 is like tunneling through a mountain (it’s tough to sort out the context in the mass of information, and problems are merely small cracks in a large mass); Enterprise 2.0 is like tunneling under water (it’s easier to get started, but problems quickly become massive problems). “Web 2.0 is about numbers of users, Enterprise 2.0 is about % of users (% of employees using social media).”

We need to encourage social comfort for employees:

Comfort with others (people to interact & share with)
Comfort with tools
Comfort with subject matter

“It’s been said that walled gardens are bad for the enterprise, but they give comfort to employees,” says Vander Wal, citing Andrew McAfee’s opening keynote at KM World 2009. “What we really want are comfortable walled gardens with permeable walls.”

Follow Thomas on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/VanderWal

Follow Toby on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TobyWard

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New BT Homepage – what’s your view?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:28:17 GMT

In the last BT Intranet user survey I carried out earlier in 2009 I asked people in BT if merging information and applications into logical groups based around activities/functions would help them. The majority answered ‘Yes’.

I am now testing the new version that tries to do this with users and asking for their views.

The last major change to the BT Homepage was at the beginning of 2009 with a recent change in some of the colours when the 2012 challenge countdown began earlier this month.

I’m sharing the proposed changes and how we are testing these with users in these slides.

What do you think of the changes and how we are testing with people to make sure they are right or be able to make further changes to get it better?

PS I’m on holiday for the next two weeks. My blog decided it wants a break too . So, my next post will be in December.

Tagged: 2012 Challenge, homepage, killer content, research, user testing, users

An easy way to improve web accessibility

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:09:16 GMT

Has anyone seen the new free accessibility tool on the WAVE site? I thought you might be interested in knowing there is a simple to use and visual tool out there compared with other tools that tend to be a bit ‘techie’ in their results.

WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid people in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.

Even better from an intranet perspective, the WAVE Firefox toolbar allows you to evaluate web pages directly within your browser. Because no information is sent to the WAVE servers, the toolbar allows you to evaluate password protected, secure, or otherwise sensitive web content. The WAVE toolbar evaluates content as it is rendered within Firefox. This allows dynamically created, modified, or scripted content to be evaluated in real time.

Tagged: accessibility, applications, intranet applications, publishing, users

Enterprise 2.0: key ingredients & barriers

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:57:02 GMT

(SAN JOSE, CA) “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals,” says the man who coined the phrase, Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management; Author, Enterprise 2.0.

“A key word is emergent… we’ve always been good at imposing things on people,” adds McAfee, who was addressing the KM World 2009 conference in San Jose. “What we’re now doing is not dictating what people need to do… but instead throwing out a technology blank slate, and letting people fill it in.”

Key ingredients for Enterprise 2.0 success:

Altruism: People want to help (stop obsessing about risks)
Process: Beware of the ‘one best way’ (use tools that let structure appear)
Innovation: Expertise is emergent (build communities that people want to join)
Intelligence: Crowds can be very wise (experiment with collective intelligence)
Benefits: Real, measurable benefits (increased innovation, employee satisfaction)
Impact: Sitting this one out is a bad idea (look at technology with fresh eyes

“I think it’s (Enterprise 2.0) as big a leap forward in the 90s as enterprise-level technology (e.g. ERP),” stresses McAfee. “We’re not going back to business as usual.”

However, McAfee emphasized that failure is common and that it is, in fact, easy to ‘snatch’ defeat from the ‘jaws of victory’ by not avoiding some common barriers:

Declare war on the enterprise (“Its bad marketing to management.”)
Allow walled gardens to flourish (silos kill)
Accentuating the negative (spend less time on the risks)
Try to replace email
Fall in love with features (we don’t want more, keep it simple)
Overuse the word “social”

McAfee concluded his keynote address to KM World 2009 with the following quote from futurist Norbert Weiner in 1954: “The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”

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Innovative intranets

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:43:37 GMT

(SAN JOSE, CA) While an innovative intranet may be cool, and look great, a truly innovative intranet delivers true value and advances an organization's standing in its industry.

The Intranet Innovations 2009 report celebrates the winners of the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards, produced by Step Two Designs, sharing remarkable ideas from across the globe.

Intranet Innovation Award winner, SabreTown (Sabre's social networking for employees)

Winning entries include intranets from all over the World including:

CRS Australia (Australia)
IDEO (USA), IBM (USA)
SunGard (USA/NZ)
NYK Group (UK)
Sabre (USA)
COWI (Denmark)
ChTPZ (Russia)
Prophet (USA)
AEP (USA).

The Intranet Innovations Awards celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets.Now in their third year, the awards have uncovered many innovative ideas from across the globe. Use these ideas to gain senior management support and to deliver an ever-better intranet.

For example, AEP, a US-based electric utility have created an online ideas system that has identified $8 million in savings, $2 million in the first month alone.

With winners across four categories (core functionality, communication and collaboration, frontline delivery and business solutions), there are valuable ideas for every intranet team.

The 198-page Intranet Innovations 2009 report shares the full results of the awards, including screenshots and details of the winning entries.

For more information:

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BT Directory – connecting people easily

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:47:36 GMT

When BT’s intranet started in December 1994 one of the key demands from people was to easily find and connect with other people in BT. Along with the BT Homepage and BT today, BT Directory was one of the ‘killer application/content’ that encouraged people to want to use BT’s intranet because it gave them a tool that helped make their life easier.

Today Directory is still as critical as when it started. It is the easiest and quickest way to find out who you need to contact in BT. I have shared some examples of BT Directory for you to see.

Ease of use (slides 1 and 2)

It is very easy to find anyone in BT. You can use Directory to find people from any page on BT’s intranet using the Global Navigation Bar (GNB). You can see I have entered my name as an example of what you do, then just press ‘Go’. Their details will appear from Directory (slide 3). You can also click on the Directory heading in the GNB to enter to use all the features on Directory (slide 2).

People information (slides 3 – 5)

You can find a person’s contact details – office and mobile phone nos., email, address - their job title, manager and what part of BT they work in. Again, I’ve used myself for the example (slide 3).

You can also check their whereabouts (downloaded automatically each day from Outlook Calendar) to be able to choose when to contact them and if their office or mobile no. is better. It helps when planning calls or meetings too (slide 4).

You can also see who is in their team as well as their manager and where in the BT organisation structure a person is. I’ve used myself to show my team and where in BT – Group Communications – I fit in (slide 5).

Extra features (slides 6 – 9)

You can use a power search to find someone by just knowing their phone no., which location they may be at, part of their name or even initials (slide 6).

You can find out who else has a particular work interest, activity or title. The example shows how many people with a connection with ‘intranet’ in BT (slide 7).

Mobile users can also use a cut down version of Directory to find people’s contact details (slide 8). The results shown are the key contact details you will need (slide 9).

As social media tools continue to grow in BT, Directory will be a hub to help you find out more useful information to help them connect easily and quickly with the best people who can help you.

Tagged: applications, best practice, bt intranet, directory, killer app, killer content, navigation, people finder

The Worldwide Intranet Challenge - Wyeth MENA is number 1 (Case Study)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:16:34 GMT

From the first 20 organisations who have participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) (TM), the most effective intranet as assessed by their own users belongs to Wyeth MENA - and they are pretty happy about it!

That's an impressive banner!!

Who is Wyeth MENA?

Wyeth MENA is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and was a division of Wyeth (incidentally the Wyeth head office intranet is ranked number 4 in the WIC). Pfizer has recently acquired Wyeth. Pfizer/Wyeth is the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company and provide a portfolio of products and medicines that support wellness and prevention, as well as treatment and cures for diseases across a broad range of therapeutic areas.

Worldwide Intranet Challenge rankings

The Wyeth MENA intranet received an overall score of 65.253% from their end users (the average score is 58.029%). In addition to this, the Wyeth MENA intranet was the number 1 ranked intranet from an end user perspective in the areas of:

Intranet look and feel
Intranet search
Intranet hierarchy
Discussing work topics
Providing feedback or comments about intranet content
Training (eg. manuals, online training)
Access to business applications
Training on using the intranet

It is no coincidence in my experience that having an effective search correlates to the value that end users place on an intranet. See my earlier blog post about the importance end users place on finding information. Providing training on using the intranet is also an easy and quick way to increase the value of your intranet - it may be that the search tool you have is OK but your end users don't how to use it.

The Wyeth MENA intranet is built using Webbuilder.

Interview with Magdy Youssef, e-Business and CRM Projects Manager

What techniques do you use to generate repeat business?
Techniques used include:

Gaining management support
Coordinated marketing plan
Maximizing the value of the homepage
Automatically loading homepage
Have your say
Monthly newsletter
Produce Regular Content
MENA Discussion Board
Brochures and Roll ups
E-mail links to intranet
Run surveys
Internal contest
‘killer applications’
Promoting via the business
Staff induction

What tasks are done to ensure the intranet is maintained?
Regular monthly tasks include:

Monitor usage statistics
Review intranet content
Rewrite key content
Mentor intranet authors
Build relationships with other teams
Meet countries needs
Support strategic projects
Build team skills and knowledge

What is the most popular use or feature of your intranet?
Poll,News,MENA spotlight,MENA discussion board

How do you make sure the intranet continues to meet your staff needs?
Getting feedback using our feedback form, conduct survey every 6 month to track the satisfaction level Provide relevant contents according to the job role, department as well as Geographical locations

How do you measure the success of your intranet?
Passive: Web trend Active: Primary survey. Focus group and face to face meeting

What are your plans for the future?
-Provide MENA intranet with specific Name ( Branding) -Add more relevant messages by segmenting the staff needs - Add more fun by running internal contest - Build one page for new staff to hold all the staff induction materials. to be the primary source of information @ new comers mind

What do you see as your biggest challenges in increasing intranet acceptance and use?
Management engagement to the Intranet services

What advice can you pass on to other intranet teams?
Get the maximum use of Home page, keep it simple and consistent.

The Wyeth MENA Home page

The following image shows the home page. It follows Magdy's guideline of being simple and consistent.

The Wyeth MENA Home page (click here for a bigger image)

How many people are using the intranet?

It's not only the positive feedback from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge that shows that the Wyeth MENA end users are happy with their intranet, they are also voting with their fingers. The following diagram shows the dramatic increase in page visits over a 3 year period. As can be seen from the diagram, when management support was obtained, things really took off.

And who is responsible?

Members of the team include Anca Davies, Baher Massoud, Claudia Burkley, Hala Abo Gazalah, Hamam Haridy, Hassan Ali, Hershey Mendoza, Joseph Tresa, Manar Hassan, Mark Allen, May Caro, Mayola D'Souza, Samantha Colaco, Sini Kurian, Trevor Parsons, Vanessa Edmunds and Vivika De leon

How do you think your intranet compares to Wyeth MENA?

So how do you think your intranet is traveling? The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) allows Intranet owners to obtain feedback from their end users through a web based survey and then compare this feedback with other participating organisations).

Some comments from organisations who have already participated in the WIC include:

"extremely useful results for validation of development plan and to support engagement and change management." - Dominic Chiappe, Lloyds Register

"It was very useful and I would recommend it to any intranet manager." - Margherita Buoso, European Space Agency

"This survey is a good idea and will allow us to benchmark ourselves against other companies. We have already started to use the survey feedback to make improvements." - Barbara Peters, Wyeth

So why not register now, there is no cost to participate.

BT today – BT’s great intranet news site

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:03:41 GMT

I’ve mentioned in previous posts BT today as BT’s main intranet news site for the latest news affecting everyone in BT. But I don’t feel I’ve given it full justice until now. The problem is where to start as it has so much to offer!

BT today was one of the first sites on BT’s intranet when it was launched in 1994. It meant people could find out the latest news, whenever they wanted to and reduced the overload (and cost) of information being sent to everyone each day.

Since it’s launch BT today has been one of the most popular sites on BT’s intranet. BT raises several tens of thousands of pounds from digital advertising on the site. It has now grown to include:

Up to 10 news stories published each day
PDA version available for mobile users
Subscribing to different RSS news feeds
Raising issues that people across BT contribute to
Sharing important events like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

I’ve shared some examples of BT today for you to see these.

Along with BT Homepage and Directory, the BT today news site is one of the key sites that encouraged people to start using the BT Intranet. Offering a wider range of news services has encouraged people to use it more, and more frequently.

Future plans include more use of photos for each story, larger photos where suitable for stories and people able to comment on each story.

Tagged: bt intranet, BT today, homepage, money, rss, social media, users, value

Intranet design

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:22:39 GMT

This is the story of a very profitable, successful, large enterprise that spent over $2 million on their intranet. When the intranet launched, it crashed in seconds. It has never gone live again (more than a year later).

Leaving an intranet design to the whim of a designer, a creative agency or any individual not working from a sound blueprint represents poor judgment, management, and is a recipe for disaster.

Sound intranet design follows a process that incorporates:

1- Business requirements (as expressed by management)
2- User requirements (as expressed by employees)
3- Strategic & functional planning
4- Governance
5- Best practices & usability

The process for arriving at the stage where a designer applies color and images to a design concept is one that should be taken seriously, and if done properly, may take a number of weeks. This process is the underlying foundation of a successful intranet design, one that is examined and outlined in the webinar Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design.

Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

Note: not all 25 intranets profiled during this webinar, but not are available for distribution.

The story of the failed intranet, and the squandering of more than $2 million and years of worker hours, is ultimately a story about a failure in planning. Without sound requirements that drive a thorough intranet blueprint, culminating in the intranet design, your intranet risks failure.

Read More on Intranet Design:
Leading an intranet redesign
Intranet redesign: rolling content inventory
Intranet redesign: building a business case
Building an intranet blueprint

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Team BT 2012 Challenge

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:45:01 GMT

On 31 October we started the 1000 day countdown to the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games. To mark this BT gave an amazing lights and fireworks display from the BT Tower.

Just like the athletes who are preparing for the Games, BT is setting its sights high with the Team BT 2012 Challenge. It will help everyone in the company focus on the future. The ‘challenge’ we are taking on is a simple one – to make BT a better business with a better future.

To showcase the launch key intranet sites, including BT Homepage promoted the 2012 Challenge. You can see from these examples how we have coordinated the changes.

There will be some more changes to BT Homepage’s structure which I will share with you later this month.

Tagged: 2012 Challenge, bt intranet, homepage

A shiny new toy for you

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:06:12 GMT

I tried to start my last post by stressing the importance of learning a broad set of basic skills to complement one or two deep skill-sets. Ultimately though I was reminded that there is simply too much to know for that approach to be feasible.

Nonetheless, there’s no sense ignoring useful tools when you find them, provided there is a simple way bring them into your toolbox. It is with this in mind that I’d like to mention another McKinsey Quartely article on the Industry Cost curve. How it’s useful to KM is not immediately obvious, but bear with me and I’ll explain why I feel it’s useful re: the deployment of KM resources within a firm.

If you’re going to read the rest of this post you really should read the McKinsey Article.

Welcome back.

The Industry Cost Curve is an analytical tool that is used in pricing and to assess just how profitable a line of business could be. Traditionally it is used to analyse commodities to determine whether or not to build a new plant and the price/margin a given commodity might be able to fetch.

With firms seemingly wed to a cost-based approach to pricing (1 hour of work costs $x and is billed at $y) and offering a arguably uniform level of quality, the Industry Cost Curve is relevant to KM in three ways:

effective deployment of KM resource can help a firm improve its margin by executing deals in a less costly way;
analysis of the various curves (by engagement type) can help a firm understand how it can best deploy its KM resource by identifying areas where the impact will be greatest; and
at a more basic level, this can help identify the business case for a KM project, even if it’s a smaller, specific piece of work rather than a giant search, taxonomy or portal project.

Now, if you’re like me, you may struggle to conduct this analysis in on your own, but I imagine some boffin from your strategy or finance department might be able to help with some of the numbers. If your efforts prove successful, your hard work will help raise the profile of KM as a strategic tool in your practice; and if not, you’ve conducted an interesting piece of analysis which will increase your insight into the practice you support.

Before you go off piste with this, chat to your business manager to see if what tools they use to manage the practice and see whether there’s any other tools for you to adopt and adapt.

101 Skills

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:20:45 GMT

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” – Alexander Pope

This post started out as a quick rant about how important it was to make it simple to learn the basic skills needed to function in your firm. Fortunately, as I was trying to finish it off, I realised how naive the post was. I’ve included my original below for a bit of fun and for some public introspection.

Being from an IT background and finding myself continually involved in some sort of IT project or another I am constantly amazed with how little other people know about IT projects. Frequently I think to myself “This is IT Projects 101!” when I come across others who don’t understand unit testing, user interface design or any number of commonplace issues in IT projects. Of course, it’s basic for me because of my experience and education, and I will be the first to admit that there is far more that I don’t know than what I do know.

In the North American vernacular, 100 level courses are synonymous with first-year university courses, 400 level courses for fourth year courses, with a 101 course being the very first in a subject area. 101 courses are simple stuff against the backdrop of the deep and complicated concepts to come. While the standard is not terribly difficult, there are a great many areas we’ve never even gained an understanding of the basics.

There is great undoubtedly a benefit to focusing on one or two niche skills, but it is important in business to understand at least enough to know where to look should something crop up. Budgets are a good example of this. Many are frightened by the annual numbers drill, and the process is made even more unpleasant when accompanied by a crippling lack of knowledge. One of our roles in knowledge management is to make it easy to get people up to a 101 standard.

Here’s a few you may choose to ask yourself in a quiet moment:

What are the 101 skills people need at my firm? Can they get them?

What 101 skills am I missing that hinder my performance at work? Is it worth gaining them or can others do them for me.

What 101 skills to people need to work on my projects? Do I make it easy for them to attain them?

What inexpensive ways can I find to help people gain these skills?

If you can’t even get the 100 level skills right, why bother with the 400 level skills?

Of course, our resources are not infinite and our ability to make available a basic level of training on every topic is constrained. Further, firms are more likely to be able to make the big money from complicated engagement (400 level skills). In the end I feel firms need to strike the right balance between:

making 101 skills simple to obtain for those who need them;
putting people on a path to build 400 level skills and beyond; and
leveraging subject matters experts in other fields, internally or externally, when needed.

Improve findability for no extra cost

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:31:18 GMT

BT’s intranet search engine, Search BT, is the biggest instance of Ultraseek run in Europe. It searches nearly 2 million different pieces of content. This includes what we call formal, verified, content as well as collaborative, user generated content.

Here’s an example of how a couple of minor changes to an intranet page had a major impact on its findability for no cost.

People wanting to review or change sharesave plans needed to download and complete a form from the BT intranet and email it to the right group.

When they searched for the form by typing in its name to Search BT the top result was a form called ‘Saveshare Changes’. So they filled it in and sent it off. But the top result was the wrong form!

The form people needed to use was under a link on the same saveshare changes page as other forms including the wrong form. With no meta data or keywords on that page to help direct the search engine, it meant the top result took you to one of several saveshare changes forms, not the page for the right form.

Once the meta data was added in the page, it rose to the top result shown on Search BT for search queries on saveshare changes.

That minor tweak to one page saved people acting on the forms a lot of time and BT money in productivity savings. It also speeded up the time for changes people wanted made saving a lot of frustration.

Tagged: blog, bt intranet, help, search, social media, users, wiki

KM Suggestions: Buy two get one free

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:16:47 GMT

This one’s a quickie, but not quite succinct enough to fit into 140 characters.

I just came across an article in the April McKinsey Quartely (password required) which discusses how to tackle strategic issues considering the current climate. Granted, while some say that the economy is picking up, several of McKinsey’s suggestions struck me as being both useful and offering an opportunity for KM folk to offer value in ways they might not normally do.

Suggestion 1 – Increase Monitoring of key industry variables. The idea being that a firm is especially sensitive to changes in the environment just now and so, the firm should keep a closer eye on what’s going on. Where KM can contribute to monitoring is in the use of available tools and information sources and in helping to identify what those variables are. Tailored alerts from providers like Lexis and Factiva can help a firm keep a tighter reign on things. Used cleverly this information can be integrated into a firm’s Intranet or delivered to Blackberries via RSS or email alerts.

Suggestion Two – Look beyond the crisis. In actuality, the work is quite similar, but look to gather and share trends that a firm may either be forced to ignore while it struggles to cope with the current climate. Again, an astute approach to the collection and distribution of this data will be helpful to others in your firm. This might involve a PSL or Information Manager keeping an eye on practice/sector trends and then synthesise these into pieces of thought leadership articles for the practice and its clients. After all, when you’re in the trenches it can be hard to get a read of the entire battlefield.

I’d like to include my own suggestion for good measure:

Be on the lookout for these requests within your firms. It can be very simple to meet a narrow request for information with a specific and narrow response. Imagine a Partner ringing you up and asks:

“Could I please have a Factiva alert on Transfer Pricing?”

The straightforward answer is ‘Yes’, whereby you login to Factiva, setup the alert and the Partner’s request has been met. However, consider what is actually being asked for and whether there might be an underlying need. Alternatively it might just be that there are other sources for that information or others in the practice who may also benefit from tracking the issue in question. As a service provider to the practice you’ll be well placed to spot trends in the behaviour of your lawyers that they may not be in a position to notice.

Thoughts on ‘Learning from failure or success’

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:48:53 GMT

Several weeks ago Mark Gould blogged about whether we learned better from instances of failure or instances of success. The post is interesting and I suggest you give it a read.

I don’t have any specific comments on what Mark has written beyond saying that I mostly agree with what he wrote; instead I would like to share some thoughts stemming from my own experience and views.

Bottom line, I’m of the view that failure is a better source of learning than success. Here’s an example which typifies my position.

Mrs. Knowledgethoughts and I are expecting our first child. As part of the process, every old wives’ tale and theory comes out of the woodwork. One of my favourites is that the severeness of morning sickness is indicative of the baby’s sex. The thinking goes that if there is morning sickness the child is more likely to be a girl, if there isn’t, a boy. A quick squiz on various baby forums shows this theory to be false and also shows cognitive fallacy at play.

“It’s true for me, so it must be true”

Which works for about two posts until contrary evidence is presented.

Correlation does not imply causation, and learning only from success often stems from correlation, the same type of learning that led us into the credit crisis (these CDSs make money now so they must do so in the future). It is just as easy to find examples of failure should you only look so far, and a single instance of failure proves the theory incorrect. Success can attributed to any number of variables, and that attribution may or may not be correct. Failure forces us to confront our Cognitive Bias, our tendency to make errors in judgement based upon cognitive factors. Failure forces an adjustment of our mental model.

Our adjustments won’t necessarily be correct, but in the process we have gained two valuable pieces of knowledge:

our mental model is not correct… yet; and
our understanding of the situation is not perfect

The first is obviously important, because you are required to either alter your view or bury your head in the sand. Should you chose the former, you will be better off in the future. Lawyers engage in this type of thinking whenever they construct an argument. Rather than accept raw ideas, they examine ideas for flaws, seeing how they stand up to changes in circumstance.

The second point is even more important because it shocks us into the unavoidable conclusion that our belief was mistaken and that future beliefs may also be incorrect and will require more rigorous conception.

I’ll close this post by sharing an example from my programming past:

When writing software, my first pass at coding is full of holes and flaws. I usually focus on implementing the perfect scenario. The user types the right thing, hits the right button and gets the right answer.

Perfect, but all I really know is that my software can handle correct input. I could run the software 100 times and get a right answer, but I haven’t learned anything about what’s wrong with it.

Fortunately I know from hundreds of previous bugs that my limited success is insufficient, and set about seeing how my system copes with unexpected inputs; users entering dates in the wrong format, missing out fields or clicking “submit” 50 times. The system will then fail time after time after time, whereby I refine the code (the model) and over time it becomes more robust, a process only becomes possible by intentionally seeking failure.

Ever come across a piece of software that didn’t work?

Don’t you wish the developer responsible had failed just one more time?

SharePoint for ECM: 5 big enhancements

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:05:00 GMT

(LAS VEGAS) Lest you be tingling with excitement about the potential enhancements to your less than spectacular content management system, there are two realities for SharePoint 2010: what is promised, and what is hoped for.

Those working with MOSS 2007 can be forgiven for the vacuous deflating sound from their proverbial balloons – those familiar with 2007 promises that don’t materialize as promised (e.g. People Search); others attending the annual SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas can be forgiven for their rapid inhalation of hot air as there is great reason to be optimistic, even excited.

Nonetheless, I’ve been both impressed and underwhelmed with what I’ve seen, but more time is needed for Microsoft to complete the beta testing and final refinements before 2010 ships to customers in the spring of 2010. When I asked SharePoint chief Tom Rizzo to explain how he thought the content management functionality compared with other market leaders, Rizzo – speaking as a proud, if not slightly defensive father – instead turned the question back on me: “I challenge all of the other vendors to offer as comprehensive a platform as SharePoint – nothing comes close.” Touché!

Here are five of the biggest impact, promised improvements to enterprise content management (ECM) that I’ve seen with my own two eyes, and even used (albeit with mixed success as the ‘lab’ demos are not all working as promised, and a demo is in fact just a demo):

1- Publishing platform – the entire publishing platform is, in essence, a wiki. You can choose to lock down wiki or public authoring rights, extend them to some, or extend them to all. However, it is possible to create sites as wikis. The wikis come with complete version control, history and permissions, and the rich editor or “ribbon” functionality (as seen in Word 200).

2- Web content management (WCM) – communications professionals rejoice: publishing news and other static content just got a lot easier. The new publishing includes the new “ribbon” user tool that opens when you click on a page or a document, or you simply hit the edit button at the top of a page. Instead of opening a content ‘template’ the new publishing features in-context editing: click on whatever piece of content you want to “edit”, and edit right there on the page (just as you would a wiki). New image tools allow for better control and manipulation of photos, and you no longer have to make the extra step of uploading a photo to a document library before you input it into the page – you can now pull images right from your hard drive, or a website URL.

3- Records management (RM) – Microsoft has invested a lot of money in improving RM in 2010. Among the many features that have impressed, users or administrators (or someone else that has permission to do so) are able to lock down a document in a document library, as a record. And with a right click, can send that document to a Record Center with confirmation. Additional Life Cycle controls have been added.

4- Digital asset management (DAM) – yes, SP 2010 actually includes DAM – you no longer have to use a third-party option to professionally manage images, video and other multimedia.

5- Taxonomy & meta data – perhaps the single, most impressive upgrade or enhancement to SharePoint is the addition of true taxonomy and meta data controls. All content now comes with a Managed Meta Data Service Term set that can be inherited from the global taxonomy (site collection), can be built upon or controlled by an administrator, or open to all users (or a combination). In other words, when content is created, be it a page, document, wiki, meta data can be added on the spot, as determined by the publisher or limited to a pre-determined set or tree of terms that is locked down. End readers and users can ‘tag’ the content as well with term tags, ratings (1-5 starts) and “I like it.” What is most encouraging about the use of meta data is that it can be “forced” or a “mandatory field” for all content (we all know that most organizations have options to input meta tags on content, but most content authors ignore it if given the choice).

Other taxonomy features:

· Term ‘nesting” or “threading”(think of the tree with parent & children categories)

· “Fill-in” choices as an option in locked-down taxonomies

· Different taxonomies at different levels: site collections, sites, libraries, etc.

· Managed meta data service can be consumed by multiple farms

· Multilingual taxonomy support (taxonomies using multiple languages)

· Taxonomy workflow (invite specific people to contribute or review the taxonomy)

· View and filter documents by term:

o Geography

o Product Category

o Vertical Industry

o Content Type

o Deal Size

o Folders

o Etc.

While not all of these promised improvements were working in the hands-on labs in my time spent using MOSS 2010, this is in-fact only the beta version (in fact, one of the MS officials helping me through the hands-on labs told me that some of the tutorials are in fact still alpha versions. In fact, the first time I used the new wiki I was convinced it was the 2007 version as I could see not a single improvement to it). There is still some 6 or 7 months still to pass before Microsoft has to work out all the bugs, kinks, and refinements (planned release to existing MOSS 2007 customers is at the end of April, though I would not expect something for installation much before the summer; new customers will have to wait even longer).

Finally, it’s worth noting that MOSS is a massively complex, and powerful system. It’s to be expected that some of the promised functionality may not work for some time, or without serious additional development and customization. In fact, any organization considering an upgrade may do well to wait until after the first service pack, or simply trial the new SharePoint Online which will have close to feature parity with the installed, on premises version.

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Which social bookmarking tool is best for BT’s intranet?

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:16:21 GMT

I’ve seen how social bookmarking and feed aggregators are increasingly being used by internet users. People can aggregate syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, even vlogs in one place for easy use.

Examples of internet social bookmarking tools that can do this are Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.

I’m interested in how BT’s intranet can use this to help people share content on our wiki, blogs, podcasts and RSS feeds with others with similar interests and work areas across all parts of BT.

So which social bookmarking tools could work best on BT’s intranet? I would love to find out more from you……!

Introducing Microsoft SharePoint 2010: learnings from SPC09

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:03:35 GMT

(LAS VEGAS, NV) If there was one, overarching message delivered by CEO Steve Ballmer in his keynote unveiling Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (at the annual SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas): SharePoint is no longer just an intranet solution, it’s been architected for all forms of web scenarios.

“SharePoint is one of my favorite Microsoft products…. It’s true,” says Ballmer. “SharePoint, in my estimation, is kind of magical. I don’t think there’s anything like it in the market. It has become a platform for a whole big set of scenarios that were served by niche (products).”

New scenarios include all of the typical intranet scenarios, but all the Internet scenarios they can attack. To drive the point home, Ballmer cited many companies already using MOSS 2007 for their public website including:

· Kraft Foods (consolidated 200 websites to a single platform saving $2 million per year)

· Volvo (36 languages, 70 countries)

· Pfizer

· Library of Congress

· Hawaiian Airlines

· Kroger

· Conservation International

However, it remains to be seen whether the improvements to MOSS’s web content management will be sufficient to quell the traditional content publishing and management concerns of marketing and communications managers who operate external websites. The new UI for web content management is a marked improvement – in-context editing deploying the ‘ribbon’ UI introduced in Office 2007.

Ballmer announced that MOSS 2010 will public beta test this November (no specific date was delivered). The MS chief also spent a lot of time talking about “the cloud” and was even so bold as to state that “SharePoint is in the center of the cloud.”

“It’s all in the cloud–we certainly agree with that,” said Ballmer, who stressed that SharePoint Online has more than 1 million online users (and 7,000 partners). “SharePoint is more capable, more extensible, more Internet & cloud focused. It’s an amazing product.”

NEW FEATURES / TOOLS:

· “Ribbon” interface (in-context editing)

· “Visual web parts” (“no more hard-coding of web parts”)

· Supports development / design on Vista & Windows 7

· Access services (publish Access dbases through SP)

· New sandboxed solutions

· Integrated rich media & Silverlight

· Improved Visual Studio & SQL

· Upgrades from 2007 will include a complete migration of an existing home page design / UI to 2010

· Improved social computing (blogs, wikis, tagging, ratings, etc)

· Improved search algorithms and FAST Search integration

· New site scenarios for:

o Pricing analysis

o Hiring processes

o Citizen management (citizen portals)

o Project tracking

o Sales reporting

o Conference planning

o Delivery scheduling

o Compliance review sites

SOCIAL COMPUTING

“We needed to facilitate this next generation of social computing,” stated Ballmer, though not convincingly, when asked about the improvements on social media – a notorious weakness of the MOSS 2007 platform. “We’ve done this with My Sites, mashing-up, etc. I think we’ve moved towards 3.0.”

Improvements to the highly criticized social computing of MOSS include:

Better blogs, wikis, calendars
Co-authoring
Content tagging
Tag clouds
Ratings
Bookmarks
MySites “Smart Profiles” and feeds
Browse colleagues and experts
“Share This Site.”

“There isn’t an enterprise on the planet that doesn’t want to embrace social computing, but they worry about how to do it,” explained Ballmer. “If we can show a path to CEOs and CIOs that we can let people interact with each other the way they want to (and still protect privacy and security) then they will embrace social computing.”

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Improvements to ECM include:

· Document management: The ceiling limit on a document library moves to 10 million, and within a site collection, to hundreds of millions of documents; no longer will you have to right click to bring up the actions / options of a document, the ribbon hosts all of the options / actions the user needs

· Taxonomy management: you will be able to have consistent content types taxonomy across server farms (applied at the document level)

· Pictures: photos no longer have to be in an SP library, but can be uploaded from your hard drive

· The addition of true Digital Asset Management

GOVERNANCE

Perhaps the biggest criticism or flaw of SharePoint has been the issue of governance, which Microsoft has only addressed half-heartedly, as reflected in Tom Rizzo’s comments: “There’s a lot we’re doing on governance, but its only 20% software, and 80% process,” says Rizzo, Senior Director, SharePoint. “We’ve invested a lot in best practices, centers of excellence. We’ll continue to invest, but I think we’re still need near the beginning, than the end.” In other words, governance is more the client’s responsibility than Microsoft’s.

SHAREPOINT CONFERENCE STATISTICS:

· 7.5 miles of network cable

· 7,400 participants (up from 3,800) – 94% growth

· 297 world class speakers

· 70 countries

· 165 sponsors

· 300+ hours

· 240 sessions

· 45+ hours of hands-on labas

· 18 customer sessions (Delloite)

· 2 SharePoint marriages

· Biggest Beach Party ever by Mandalay with Huey Lewis & The News

Follow my SharePoint conference updates on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TobyWard #spc09

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Here’s Waving at you kid

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:44:48 GMT

Earlier today I received my Google Wave invite along with many thousands (millions?) of others. For those who don’t know, a Wave is synonymous with a real-time email/Twitter conversation amongst an ad-hoc group.

Even at this early stage, what seems clear to me, is that Wave will influence how email works in future, setting aside the numerous risk & implementation issues with Google’s version. Once you get into the swing of things, it’s a more effective than the context-less approach of Email1.0.

In getting my feet wet, I first shared some invites with people I know in the KM community. I have 5 left and will happily share them provided you’ve an an obvious interest in legal KM type. Just leave a comment to this post and I’ll get in touch.

Creating a Wave is as simple as creating an email. You only need to hit “New Wave” and you’ll get a conversion for one. You can get a better idea of functionality by watching watch this video.

Having activated my Wave account, I noticed via Twitter that several people I knew were already on Wave (Doug Cornelius and Mary Abraham) and added them to a Wave I had created. It’s slightly ironic that in order to add & find others I had to contact them via Twitter.

I have to say that currently the interface needs work, but also, I need a better understanding of how it might be used. Doug, Mary and I have already started getting our feet wet with chats on privacy and possible uses. If you’ve got Wave account and want to participate in our initial foray into KM Waviness, then add neil.richards@googlewave.com as a contact and I’ll add you in.

Some questions I have yet to answer:

How do I share a link to a Wave?
Is a Wave public? How would I make it so?
How do I control the privacy of a Wave?

There’s a lot more to be said about Wave, but you really need to read / see it for yourself. Watch a couple of the vids to get a better idea as to what it’s all about.

Oracle UCM or WordPress or Confluence for BT?

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:07:53 GMT

Over the last few months I’ve been involved with testing different publishing tools to replace what we currently use for intranet content. This is for what we call formal, verified, content rather than collaborative, user generated content.

Using a set of user stories to explain business and users needs I could consistently assess each tool and compare with more confidence.

Now I’ve completed the testing I think:

For larger sites Oracle UCM could be a better choice than Confluence. It may be more complex but it has powerful site-wide control features. For smaller sites Oracle has said the set up and publisher training overheads require too much effort for the benefit to be gained.

For smaller sites WordPress could be a better choice than Confluence for its ease of use and rapid deployment advantages. WordPress has limited site-wide control features but these are less likely to be required on smaller sites. I feel WordPress’ more straightforward template control ability can overcome these.

I think Confluence is a good collaborative tool but maybe not the ideal choice for publishing formal content.

I’ve used some criteria for the size of a site. If any site meets the 5 points below then I believe it is more suited for WordPress. If it doesn’t then I think it is more suited for Oracle UCM:

One site owner and ten or less publishers.
Usage below 1 million views per month
Would benefit from the use of RSS (incoming and outgoing)
Initially below 200 pages until I see how the templates cope, then and I might increase this.
Does not have complex requirements for third party access

I need to agree this with my colleagues in BT. It may be the recommendations are not affordable with the current economic climate. There are technical or security reasons for choosing a different solution.

Whatever happens, I’m sure BT will continue to use Confluence for collaborative content.

Tagged: bt intranet, content, governance, oracle, publishing, standards

Intranet governance begets intranet success

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:29:00 GMT

As is the case with most websites or intranets it is simply impossible to achieve any long-lasting success without a clearly defined ownership and management structure. Intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors. However, at the heart of a successful model, is a powerful executive with purse strings, supported by a solid intranet team.

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding governance and a successful intranet, culled from the Q&A of my webinar on Intranet Governance (the highest attended webinar to date) last month:

Q- How do you define what a great intranet is?

A – A great intranet:

operates from a thorough, well defined plan;
is managed by a rigorous governance model supported by a powerful senior executive and a solid management team;
has a reasonable budget for both technical and content development;
features solid, purposeful content and tools that actively support the day-to-day work of employees; and
delivers a solid return on investment in the form of cost savings / cost avoidance and increased sales.

Down the complete Good to Great Intranet Matrix (a guide for evolving your intranet from good to great).

Q - What is the governance model that fits companies who have made the move to social media on their intranet?

A – Governance depends on the culture, company and the management and stakeholders involved. Social media MUST have governance though it should fall under the central intranet governance unless the social media tools are purely separate and owned separately from the intranet / portal home.

A successful social media governance model requires:

A defined owner with clout
Defined roles & responsibilities for all
Policies (rules) for contributing content
Terms of use

Q - Can you talk to setting up a steering committee in more detail, especially when all stakeholders feel that it is their intranet?

A – Follow a proper intranet assessment to ensure that all key intranet stakeholders (managers and executives with a full, partial or perceived ownership stake in the intranet or its major sections and tools) have a formal opportunity to provide input and to itemize their key requirements. From assessment you move into intranet planning that actively engages these key stakeholders and culminates in the development of one of four key intranet governance models that all (or at least most) agree to adopt for their own.

They key is building consensus. If the stakeholder environment is particularly fractured and not given to teamwork, or have competing priorities, then a third-party, non-partisan can help facilitate the process and break down the political barriers.

ThoughtFarmer Announces Alliance with Dachis Group to Deliver Social Business Solutions

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:38:43 GMT

The coolest thing to happen this year to the stuffy world of IT consulting firms is the formation of Dachis Group. Led by the former CEO of Razorfish, Jeffrey Dachis, they’ve assembled a rockstar team of the best and brightest minds in social software and secured a $50 million commitment from Austin Ventures.

So when Dachis Group went looking to partner with the best social software technology vendors, who’d they call? Oh yeah, you know it, baby. Us. They called us.

ThoughtFarmer is amongst a handful of select partners that Dachis Group will leverage to service the business needs of their customers. Other technology partners include IBM Lotus Connections, Atlassian Confluence and coTweet.

What does this alliance mean for you, our clients, partners and potential customers? First, you can take advantage of Dachis Group’s complete range of strategic services when introducing ThoughtFarmer to your company. And second, it’s another reason you can be confident that ThoughtFarmer is the best-of-breed solution for your social intranet.

Related news:

Want a sneak preview of our upcoming release, ThoughtFarmer 3.6? Contact ThoughtFarmer Sales.

Prevent intranet errors rather than cure them

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:31:05 GMT

BT’s intranet is everyone’s workplace for whatever they need to for their work. Whether it is reading the latest news, collaborating with people or completing a task you need to use the BT intranet.

So it is vital BT makes sure people are 100% confident they can rely on the integrity of the information and applications on BT’s intranet.

BT does this with a small central team to set standards and prevent errors happening so everyone can rely on the BT Intranet. These include:

Clauses in contracts

In BT’s procurement process there is a clause to make sure any web service bought meets the UK Disability and Discrimination Act 1995 for web accessibility. BT aims for WAI W3C AA standards. There is also a clause on the usability standards the web service needs to meet. These clauses help prevent web services being implemented that don’t meet BT’s intranet standards.

Standards for developing web services

The same applies for web services BT develops as well as buys on accessibility and usability. The developers refer to our accessibility and usability standards and apply them to the software they develop. This gives a consistent approach to any new web service for BT Intranet users.

Publishing templates

For all types of content published BT has built as many standards as possible into the templates used. This saves time training publishers and it doesn’t dely them publishing content. Templates are AA compliant for web accessibility, usable . Templates have links to PDA format, print, A-Z, global navigation bar, name of page owner, review date, etc. Users see the same information in the same parts of the screen across BT’s intranet giving a consistently valuable experience.

Publishing training

Before anyone can publish format content they need to show they have completed online training covering publishing standards. This builds up a consistent level of awareness and understanding before anyone publishes. For other content types like blogs people don’t need approval or training – they just start publishing……….

All of these have combined to reduce issues to a minimum that cause a loss of productivity, business decisions taken on inaccurate information and unnecessary helpdesk queries.

Tagged: accessibility, bt intranet, content, governance, intranet applications, navigation, publishing, social media, standards, usability standards, users

Intranet in the cloud

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:36:50 GMT

You’ve probably seen the term, or heard it bantered about by geeks, or maybe your head is in it… but you may not fully understand the term “cloud” or “SasS” (software as a service) or perhaps just think its another catchy marketing acronym like MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server).

The “cloud” refers to cloud computing that at the risk of over-simplifying is simply hosting – computer, server, software, and other hardware and infrastructure hosting. You’re already a cloud customer, probably many times over (someone is hosting your email, website, blog, etc. In fact, 56% of internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail – hosted email in the cloud).

In short, hosting is provided as a service over the Internet. SaaS is simply hosted software that could include your website content management system, search engine, CRM (Salesforce.com), etc. The cloud is merely a metaphor based loosely on those computer network diagrams that so cleverly depict little computers with wires running between each other, servers, firewalls, etc.

I was recently pressed on the subject of a “hosted intranet” and why an organization shouldn’t outsource their intranet to “the cloud.” God forbid we let professionals who know what they’re doing maintain our second-rate, after-though, cost-center of an intranet!

It is baffling to me that the intranet isn’t hosted externally for more organizations. Well, I’m well versed with clueless executives with knee-jerk reactions around “security”, privacy, and “the way things have always been done” but I guess I’m naïve to have faith that more would start to embrace the 21st century. If these dolts can Facebook then surely there’s hope, right?

The biggest obstacle blocking the migration of more intranets to the cloud is culture and fear of the ‘unknown’. If the host has proper security does it matter if it’s hosted elsewhere? We do our banking online now – we can’t access the intranet over the Internet?! Most of our benefits and compensation systems are now hosted elsewhere in the cloud – we’re talking about people’s pay, insurance and benefits!

In fact, if it costs me less money and I don't have to worry about the maintenance then you better believe I choose hosted – and I have told clients the same. Its one of the reasons the "cloud" is expanding so fast. It would be 10 times the size if people would just get beyond the knee-jerk reaction to have everything in-house where it costs more, and probably enjoys less security than the top of the line that many hosts employ.

The downside to avoiding the cloud can be far more expensive: I have one client (identity protected) who spent well more than $1 million on a new intranet design and platform and it crashed in the first few minutes, never to go live again because the organization didn’t have the proper infrastructure. One-and-one-half years later, the intranet is still not live. This would never have happened had it been turned over to a host. Instead, millions of dollars have been lost, and countless thousands of employee hours.

Has your organization embraced the cloud, or are you wasting valuable time and skills on hosting and maintenance?

NEXT WEBINAR:

What do the best intranets look like? What are the best practices and principles for redesigning an intranet? Having designed and re-designed dozens of intranet sites (and websites), Prescient Digital Media’s Toby Ward and Catherine Elder will draw on their experiences to provide best practices in approaching intranet design.

Reserve your spot for: Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design

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Make money from your intranet like BT does

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:24:52 GMT

In a recession every penny spent investing in BT’s intranet is closely monitored. So the chance to generate some revenue is very welcome. Whenever I say BT makes money from its intranet to people they raise their eyebrows and ask the obvious questions ”What?” and “How?”.

Here are two examples showing ‘what’ and ‘how’ BT’s intranet has made money.

External advertising on intranet

BT allows external organisations to advertise on one intranet site only. This is our corporate news site, BT today. People in BT have accepted for years that adverts appear in the magazine as they do for other newspapers.

We extended advertising to the BT today news site in a way that didn’t distract users from their main purpose for using the site – finding the latest news – while encouraging them to click on the adverts. It brings in valuable revenue – several hundred thousands of pounds each year.

We haven’t had any complaints about adverts being too invasive or distracting.

Sponsored links on search engine

BT has a business partnership with Yahoo! Intranet users have a BT Yahoo! internet search option. It means Yahoo! gets more clicks to its internet search and BT gets a % of the sponsored links people in BT click on when searching. This has come to several thousands of pounds over the past year.

These internet search links appear on BT Homepage and Search BT, our intranet search engine with a short message promoting the benefits to BT.

Tagged: benefit, bt intranet, homepage, money, search, value

A KM Groundswell?

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:18:21 GMT

Presenting hard data in an insightful and interesting manner is very difficult. Malcolm Gladwell and Jim Collins do so by telling compelling stories, the New York Times, while using stories, also does it through clever infographics.

Forrester have just published an interesting piece of work on the Groundswell blog I encourage you to check out, not only because it’s well presented, but because it should provide some useful insight for KM folk.

The useful insight (theirs not mine)

Forrester have put together a little tool which profiles how different people use social technologies and provides hard data as to use within different age groups & countries (included below). Have a play, its fun, but before you do, reading about the different user profiles will help your understanding.

Okay, now that you’ve enjoyed yourself here’s what I think it means for KM.

In general, the use of social technologies is increasing, but adoption rates vary significantly in differrent countries. For a global firm that will colour your adoption rates and should inform how you deploy social tools. The Germans just aren’t adopting these tools as much as others in Europe. Italy might be your best bet for a pilot of new tools.

Further, age makes a huge different in terms of correlation with a profile. The younger you are, the higher up the ladder you’re likely to be. Funny how those with the least experience are the most eager to share. Seems like a characteristic to nurture.

While the survey was not aimed at lawyers, I believe the results can reasonably be extrapolated to lawyers in their respective countries.

In terms of the different social profiles, here’s my view of what the results mean:

On Creators

A smallish group, the desire to contribute raw content is not pervasive. While it might not be an area to devote a huge amount of time, it might be worthwhile to consider giving the young’uns access to these tools so that they can share experience with their peers (i.e. trainee to trainee rather than trainee to partner). It may not be PLC quality knowledge, but it might not need to be. In fact, the younger lawyers may be much closer to the knowledge that needs sharing than the Partners (who should be the grunt work).

On Critics

Commenting on other content is more popular than raw content creation. Tools aimed at capturing knowledge through comments, contributions to wiki articles, content ratings & discussions seem likely to see real use. Again, age plays a big impact in terms of adoption, but arguably, it’s the less experienced who need the tools and are most amenable to KM indoctrination.

Teach them early and often and they just might develop some good habits.

On Collectors

The least popular of all tools, this area just isn’t going to give you as much adoption for your money. Tagging it seems, is for a select group of people. This is a little disappointing (since I obsessively use Delicious) but sometimes the truth hurts. I’d include the users of a number of the classical KM tools in this category as it’s often about profiling existing content.

On Joiners

People like Facebook apparently and of all the profiles that “participate” in the use of social tools, this is the most popular area. Still, a “Facebook for the Enterprise” sounds pretty lame, and I’m not sure there’s a latent desire for KM tools in this space among end-users.

If there is, my sense is that it would need to feel fun and light. What might that look like?

My guess? Not like Sharepoint’s My Site.

On Spectators

Passive consumers, they read things based on interest. Content is king, spend money on PSLs or creating tools for the producers, this lot (tend to be older) aren’t likely to contribute anything.

On Inactives

When you’re this experienced who needs to listen to the views of others? Cater to the needs of others, at most this group aren’t likely to share knowledge using any tool other writing a document or sending an email.

Intranet Strategie, Content-Qualität, Governance und Suche… - in 2 Tagen

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:07:44 GMT

Diese 4 Themenblöcke bestimmen das Programm der am 3.-4. November 2009 in Frankfurt stattfindenden Intranet Strategietage.

Dabei handelt es sich um ein Seminarkonzept der ECM WORLD, das im Sommer diesen Jahres bereits erfolgreich in Zürich initiert wurde und nun auch in Deutschland durchgeführt wird. Interessenten können sich aus den 4 halbtägigen Kompaktblöcken ihr individuelles Seminarprogramm zusammenstellen:

Intranet-Strategie und -Management
Redaktionsprozesse und Content-Qualität
Intranet-Governance und Zielcontrolling
Suche und Informationsarchitektur

Infos und Anmeldung unter: Intranet Strategietage 09

Oracle responds to my UCM wish list

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:19:04 GMT

I had another call with Oracle to build on their initial response to my first call and my recent meeting with Oracle about my UCM improvements wish list. This focused on the usability issues BT has with Oracle UCM version 10GR3.

They have attempted to address the issues we have raised. There are changes with 10GR4 and 11GR which Oracle claim will improve the usability of UCM. However I’m not sure whether BT can justify the resources required to use UCM ‘well enough’ to gain these benefits.

I really want UCM to have simpler, fewer, features that mean user with little or no technical skills can easily use it for publishing content. Oracle’s focus is also on improving usability but for the highly skilled technical minded people not the majority of users.

I’m not the only one with issues. Look at the SWOT analysis on UCM the University of Minnesota carried out.

So, Oracle are making improvements. Oracle have offered to pick up the outstanding issues not fixed by releases already completed with BT later in October.

So, continue to let me know of the issues you have that I can raise on your behalf by commenting, tweeting or emailing me.

Tagged: bt intranet, intranet applications, oracle, usability, usability standards

Is Oracle up to its old tricks?

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:29:32 GMT

My first meeting with Oracle last week went well. Oracle agreed with my usability issues and promised to improve their usability. My call on Friday with Oracle to cover my UCM issues started off well. Oracle agreed I did have good points about UCM’s usability. Oracle agreed to email me with actions, owners and timescales.

However that didn’t happened. Instead of a commitment to say what version would solve which problem and involving me in any unsolved issues all I have been offered is another call this Friday to cover what Oracle can do.

Maybe I’m being impatient but since it was 3 months ago that I originally raised these same issues it is disappointing the answers are not ready to hand on what Oracle can do.

So while I am making progress on wider usability issues with Oracle products through the Customer Advisory Council, the news isn’t so good for UCM…………….so far.

I’ll update you on any news after Friday’s call.

Tagged: bt intranet, intranet applications, oracle, usability standards

Top 5 intranet KPIs

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 05:35:53 GMT

In many ways, websites and intranets are like telephone systems – they assist us in accomplishing mission-critical work all the time but their true value is rarely measured.

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Most people and organizations inherently know and understand the value of the telephone and don’t require a detailed ROI balance sheet before buying a phone. Like the telephone, most organizations inherently understand the value of an intranet, but don’t truly measure its value beyond HITS.

Failure to measure your intranet’s performance above and beyond simple analytics (e.g. HITS and page views) is a failure of responsibility (particularly in this economy where most organizations are looking cut costs wherever they find them).

Here are five noteworthy key performance indicators (KPIs) that you need to adopt:

Sales – if you’re intranet is not helping your organization increase sales, then you’re missing out. It’s far too easy to accomplish with a little planning and execution. Among the benefits:

Provide the sales team with better information, more efficiently
Solicit and reward employee leads & referrals

Additional reading:

Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA

User satisfaction – more important than what employees are reading, and how often / much, is their satisfaction with the intranet. How happy are they? In particular, user satisfaction with:

Design
Content
Navigation
Tools
Search

Among the satisfaction metrics BT tracks on their intranet (see Satisfied BT Intranet users « Mark Morrell):

83% satisfied with the intranet (down 3%)
42% extremely/very satisfied with the intranet (down 3%)
6% are dissatisfied with the intranet (up 2%)
79% satisfied with BT Homepage (new design) the corporate intranet portal (down 3%)
43% extremely/very satisfied the BT Homepage (down 5%)
3% dissatisfied with BT Homepage (no change)

Productivity – the intranet can significantly boost employee productivity and their ability to find information and tools to complete their work. Among the productivity metrics that Microsoft, IBM and BT track:

33% of Microsoft employee survey participants (33%) agree completely that the Microsoft intranet (MSWeb) saves them time
27% agree completely that MSWeb has helped to improve their productivity (8 or 9 on a nine-point scale)
80% IBM employees visit w3 (the intranet) at least once per day
68% view the intranet as crucial to their jobs
52% are more satisfied to be an IBM employee because of information obtained on w3
48% agree the BT Intranet improves everyday working life
57% agree the BT Intranet saves me time in my working day
59% agree the BT Intranet helps me to be more efficient in my job

Additional reading:

Intranet 2.0 case study: BT

Leading intranet case study: IBM’s W3

Stakeholder satisfaction – a far more critical and discerning audience are those managers and executives (stakeholders) that have a hand in or ownership of the intranet. Our intranet consultants (Prescient Digital Media) have solicited and surveyed stakeholders for their opinions and ratings of the for more than 100 intranet clients. Why? It’s not just about making users happy, but also making management happy.

Additional reading:

Creating A Measurable Intranet Strategy Prescient Digital Media (PPT with case study from PNC Bank)

Cost savings – why have an intranet if it’s not saving your organization money? Improved communications and HR are nice, soft benefits, but if the intranet is delivering those benefits, then it’s probably delivering cost savings that you just haven’t measured. Everything from paper, software, technology, administration, distribution / delivery, and travel costs to just about anything under the sun. There are hundreds of areas to save money with your intranet.

Additional reading:

Finding ROI: Measuring Intranet Investments (free white paper)

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Oracle usability update

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:35:45 GMT

Yesterday I had the first of two meetings this week with Oracle to discuss the usability issues raised about Oracle UCM on my blog. Oracle accepted the usability issues I raised. Oracle wanted to address them in several ways.

1. The next version of UCM (10G4) will address some of the issues raised. 11G will address others. My 2nd meeting will identify which ones in more detail.

2. As BT is a major customer of Oracle I will be invited to their Customer Advisory Council meetings in future. There biggest customers have the opportunity to raise usability issues across the whole product range.

3. BT’s usability standards I posted about will be reviewed by Oracle to consider as a benchmark for usability of their products in future.

While there are no guarantees that any of this will happen or improve usability it is refreshing to see the attitude taken by Oracle at the first meeting. Time will tell if discussions are turned into actions and usability improves though.

I will keep you posted on how the 2nd meeting goes.

Tagged: bt intranet, intranet applications, oracle, usability, usability standards

Intranet Assessment

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:26:15 GMT

An intranet or website is more than a project or a piece of technology; it’s a mission-critical business system and a significant investment that requires proper planning.

Many intranets begin without a plan; many are redesigned without a plan. An intranet is far too expensive to leave to guess work, intuition, or a single-minded purpose such as communications or HR. In order to truly realize the full value of the investment the intranet must have a proper plan that accounts for all aspects of the business – including HR, IT, communications, operations, finance, etc. A proper plan begins with a thorough assessment.

Prescient has a five-phased approach or methodology that our Intranet consultants use to creating highly effective intranets and portals. The first phase of this methodology is the Assessment phase, where the business and functional requirements of the intranet or website are determined and documented.

Prescient's unique intranet project methodology

Despite the traditional focus on technology and integration, the most critical phases are the initial ones: Assessment and Planning. At the heart of an intranet's success is the strength of the plan that governs it, and a successful plan begins with a website or intranet assessment.

ASSESSMENT

Before undertaking any website plan or build, an extensive needs or business requirements assessment is necessary to identify, develop, prioritize, and document goals and current practices.

The assessment should include stakeholder interviews and input, as well as user research, and possibly stakeholder workshops. When building a leading-edge website, a detailed strategic blueprint can be crafted with the acquired data and knowledge including:

Creative
Information architecture
Technology
ROI plans

It is recommended that any organization consider engaging a third-party or consultant to conduct the assessment. While the cost may be prohibitive for organizations with tight budgets, a third-party may be more successful in gathering sensitive opinions and feedback as a third-party, unlike stakeholders, have no personal attachment or stake in the intranet and do not have any political agendas.

It is important to gather the needs and requirements of stakeholder and users, at the risk of failure; a representative sampling of user opinions is crucial to gathering an accurate reading on user needs and requirements.

Engaging Users, Identifying Needs

The first two phases, assessment followed by planning, are perhaps the two most important phases: without undertaking rigorous and thorough assessment and planning stages, the subsequent three phases will not realize their potential. The purpose of the assessment is to identify the organization’s needs and requirements. Steps in the assessment phase should include:

Current state site evaluation
Business requirements interviews
User surveys
User focus groups
Review of existing research (surveys, etc.)
Benchmarking (best practices)
Usability testing

Business and needs assessment

The assessment serves two important needs: it documents the needs and requirements of the user population, for the purpose of answering those needs.Before undertaking any site or portal design or redesign, regardless of the size of the project, a requirements assessment is necessary to identify, develop, prioritize, and document goals and current practices. As mentioned above, each engagement begins with an assessment that concretely identifies and documents the project’s goals and objectives, aligns those objectives with those of the sponsoring department and the enterprise as a whole, as well as documents the needs and requirements of the user audience and stakeholders.

Armed with the acquired data and knowledge, a detailed strategic blueprint – including creative, information architecture, and ROI plans – can be crafted to build a leading edge site. Individual modules in the Assessment Phase may include Stakeholder Engagement, User Research Review, User Survey, User Focus Groups, Benchmarking (sometimes conducted in the Planning Phase) and the delivery of the Key Findings Report.

FREE WEBINAR:

Online registration is now open for Intranet Governance: How to Run An Intranet

(Sept 23, 12pm EDT)

ADDITIONAL READING:

Intranet Evaluation

The Intranet Plan

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If Sharepoint is the solution, what is the problem? Part II/II

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:20:41 GMT

Yesterday I discussed Generic Problems, which make up the day-to-day of law firm life for a good many people.

Dealing with these problems in a systematised way often involves a piece of software. When software is needed, the firm’s IT Director (lets call him Bob) is often the first point of call. Keep in mind however that Bob not only has to deliver a system to solve your generic problem, but also has to deal with his own generic problems.

“How dare he?!?!” you might ask.

Well, Bob has a duty of care to keep budgets low so that the Partners’ children can go to Oxford. Bob can’t do that if he treats every new system as a unique instance. He needs a way of delivering generic IT requirements in a consistent and cost-effective manner. Below I’ve listed some of the characteristics of generic IT systems:

Simple to deploy
Respect security & confidentiality requirements
Function on firm hardware
Utilise the firm’s taxonomy
Be simple to use

To the extent that Sharepoint helps deliver these requirements without having to write any code, it makes a firm more efficient, contains cost and ensures little Henry won’t have to slum it at Cambridge. Using Sharepoint saves the firm from figuring out “how” to implement security for any given system because delivering security requirements becomes generic. The project team can then focus on:

what the business requirements are;
how Sharepoint maps to those requirements; and
what gaps exist between Sharepoint functionality and the business requirements.

Take for example a firm that is looking to build an expertise tracking system. Traditionally this would have involved a developer finding some space on a server somewhere, grabbing some database space, then working through global deployment issues. When it comes time to do an upgrade the process will be complicated and similarly bespoke. With Sharepoint the approach is known in advance.

Further, as a platform, Sharepoint ticks some important boxes.

its scalable
its upgradeable
its distributed (important for remote offices)

For a Knowledge Management professional, the parallel should be clear. It’s stopping the firm from reinventing the wheel, and helping it learn from prior projects.

What’s not to like?

But is Sharepoint worthwhile?

I would say that it’s probably “good enough” to support a great many requirements. Most applications needed to run a law firm are not terribly complex, and while people like bells and whistles, the reality of bespoke software development in small companies (and sometimes large companies) is that once a system is finished it is unlikely to be upgraded for a long period of time.

What it does well

managing lists
managing tasks
managing simple work flows
managing documents
connecting systems

What it doesn’t do well

wikis
relational data
deliver to your exact requirements.

One problem is people’s expectations. If your requirements can mostly be met through the use of a generic tool, is it unacceptable to ask the business for a bit of compromise? Hardly. If the business case warrants it, Sharepoint is extremely customisable, you merely have to have the willingness and the developers to do so.

On Expectations

Sharepoint out of the box is not sufficient to solve the needs of most firms, in the same way that a vanilla wiki / blog / search engine is not sufficient.

Is it sold as a one-stop-show? Yup.

Is that wrongheaded? Definitely

Sharepoint is a tool like any other. In order to be effective with it, you need to understand what it is capable of and how to use it. When a specific requirement appears that cannot be delivered in an elegant way, customisation is almost always possible and appropriate. Moreover, just as a swiss army knife is useful in a number of situations, it has neither the best knife, saw, bottle opener or toothpick.

From time to time a firm will encounter generic problems which are so important / specific that they will warrant specialised software. Examples would include Document Management, legal research tools & Billing. Alternatively, there may be other tools (like wikis) which can be used to substantially better effect, especially if highly structured data is not required.

My Oracle UCM improvement wish list

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:36:47 GMT

Oracle is aware of Janus Boye and my blog posts and tweets on Twitter about Oracle usability issues. Oracle want to help resolve these. I’m starting with Oracle UCM.

Am I missing any of your issues?

1. Publisher control

Oracle UCM has poor ‘granularity’ of permissions and no obvious back end to see who has access.

The permissions only allow two (publisher) levels, a limited ‘only edit what’s already there’ and a far too powerful ‘does lots of complicated stuff with a very complex interface’. This suits organisations with a few powerful people in a central group, but not BT’s intranet governance model which has decentralised publishers.

A hard coded menu item called ’switch region context’ has no place on an interface I expect a large number of users to use, and that’s only one part of a convoluted process to add a new page.

The user ids do not integrate with other user ID systems and it is difficult to integrate this with other processes (e.g. make sure that only people who have done training have access).

2. Quality of web pages

Oracle UCM should never be able to generate invalid code.

The conversion from MS Word is very poor ‘out of the box’, producing inaccessible and invalid code. With a lot of work – BT was able to improve this but never approached an acceptable level. Oracle UCM needs only to allow ‘well written’ MS Word documents (i.e. only accept well formed documents) and to reject (with explanations) documents it cannot convert to valid, accessible pages.

The site studio interface is poor and difficult to apply standards to. The browser version support is difficult and you have to rely on using admin permissions to install a clunky java applet. I don’t know if the applet is usable to people with disabilities. If it must use ‘rich’ interface elements then accessibility must be considered.

The pages themselves seem to insert a pile of javascript (is this out of the box?) and it’s difficult to enforce things like good metadata.

3. Template creation and management

There seem to be few well written components to use in the templates. Additional features (e.g. embedded video, RSS) need to be custom written and template specific. That’s a maintenance headache waiting to happen.

Management of templates appears to be awful. This encourages poor re-use of template development resource. It’s hard to quantify the effort required creating a template, but it seems to be excessive compared to other competitors. BT’s aim is to reduce, not increase, costs.

Please help me to help you with Oracle applications’ usability by commenting.

Tagged: applications, bt intranet, intranet applications, oracle, usability, users

If Sharepoint is the solution, what is the problem? Part I/II

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:22:47 GMT

First off, apologies for the break. I’ve been on holidays, recovering from jet-lag, and suffering social activity fatigue. Also, Twitter (you can follow me at twitter.com/neilrichards) makes for a quick way to participate on-line without the burden of writing a blog post.

On with the show.

Quite a long time ago, my friend Mark Gould posted a comment in response to a post about Sharepoint. Mark’s queried why firms should consider adopting Sharepoint as it is fraught with risks (such as unmanageable group growth). I had a similar exchange with Mary Abraham on Twitter, but am unable to recall the log from Twitter at the moment.

“Why Sharepoint?” is a worthy question and I’ll look to management guru, the late Peter Drucker to help me answer it.

In his book “The Effective Excecutive” Drucker classifies four types of problems:

Truly Generic (individual occurrence of a problem is a symptom of a common issue)
Generic, but Unique for the individual institution (i.e. merger)
Truly exceptional, truly unique (coping with a Black Swan event)
Early manifestation of a new generic problem (responding to toxic assets)

Today, I’ll outline what these “problems” look like in law-firm speak. Tomorrow, I’ll share why I feel Sharepoint is suitable in addressing some of these.

Of the four types of problems, only the Truly Generic is relevant to our discussion. However if you are interested in reading more about the other classes of problem, Sources of Insight provides a quick breakdown.

Truly Generic problems

A “truly generic” problem is something that comes about frequently and is not dealt with as a one-off, but instead is dealt with as part of day to day operations. Consider the following example:

Whenever Acme Partners LLP needs to hire new trainees they go to the law schools. Sometimes they find themselves hiring well after the end of the year, with all the top students having already signed training contracts. Other times, they are mid-year, with students still months away from being ready to begin their legal career in full.

With such an ad hoc approach, the firm rarely gets to speak with the top students and even more rarely, is able to hire one. After years of only hiring students at the lower-range, quality is poor, profits are low and partners are unable to afford that second Ferrari.

Then one year, they happen to be hiring just as the law students are seeking their Training Contracts. With exposure to more students, Acme Partners land some high-quality prospects. Reflecting on their success, one astute Partner asks:

“Why don’t we just hire at this time every year? We might not be able to get the very best just yet, but we’ll get better than we normally do.”

And so a policy to only hire as students complete their law course is born.

The very specific problem “I need to hire a single student as of 12 September, 2009″ is merely an instance of the generic problem “I need to hire a student”. By taking a step back, the generic solution allows the firm to achieve better, more consistent results.

Law firms encounter dozens if not hundreds of these generic problems. A firm that fails to systematise these would soon find themselves out of business. Some examples:

Sharing documents
Researching legal questions
Tracking credentials / major deals
Managing relationship information about each client

The solution to a generic problem can be found through the adoption of a policy, a procedure, a strategy, a piece of software, or combination thereof.

Tomorrow, I’ll share why I think Sharepoint is an appropriate tool to use when solving some of these problems.

Building a task based intranet using SharePoint (AGL case study)

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:47:48 GMT

What is a task based intranet?

One of the key business drivers behind an effective intranet is using it to improve business processes. If an intranet can be integrated into employees everyday work life by making it easier to get things done, it then becomes more relevant, useful and business critical to an organisation.

This article describes how AGL used SharePoint 2007 to build a task based intranet. AGL is Australia's largest gas and electricity retailer, with over 3.2 million customer accounts and approximately 2,200 employees. It has recently invested in renewable energy businesses such as wind farms and a hydroelectric power station.

Intranet redesign strategy

In early 2008, AGL made the decision to implement MOSS 2007 and redesign their intranet. At the core of the intranet redesign strategy was the requirement to build an intranet that helped employees complete business tasks on a daily basis. 'Energy in Action' is AGL's brand promise and it was also the guiding principle behind the new intranet strategy - to build an intranet that facilitated action.

To address this need, the concept of 'I would like to' pages was developed - a template based approach for quickly creating high quality web based quick reference cards that allows all employees across the organisation to share valuable information and complete common business tasks over the intranet.

Example of an 'I would like to' page

The following screen shot shows an ‘I would like to’ page for nominating an employee for an award as part of AGL's reward and recognition program (click the image for a bigger screen shot).

The above screen includes brief instructions for how to complete the task (one of the guidelines is to keep pages above the fold – ie. No vertical scrolling). Links are provided if additional information is required - for example to the relevant application, web site, example document, template, policy or procedure document. A list of properties (or metadata) is provided to enable categorization and searching of ‘I would like to’ pages.

There are also two feedback mechanisms to facilitate continuous improvement:

A "Suggest a change" to this page link
A rate this function

How do employees locate the 'I would like to' pages

Employees can locate relevant ‘I would like to’ pages in a number of ways:

A tab on the home page that provides a one-stop-shop to all ‘I would like to topics’,
A list of popular and recently added ‘I would like to’ pages is also listed on the home page,
‘I would like to’ pages are accessible from the relevant business unit page (eg. All people related ‘I would like to’ may be found on the People and Culture Business Unit page), and
The search.

AGL Intranet Home Page (click image for a bigger picture)

'I would like to' landing page

The screen shot below shows the ‘I would like to’ landing page. From here, employees are able to:

Browse I would like to topics by a range of categories,
Search for a specific topic,
View recently added or updated topics, and
View the most popular topics.

I would like to landing page (click image for a bigger picture)

Creating an 'I would like to' page

Anyone within the organisation can create an ‘I would like to’ page. They simply complete an online form and click 'Submit'. This initiates a work flow process of quality checks and approvals before the final page is published.

Creating an I would like to page (click image for a bigger picture)

Some ‘I would like to’ topics are actually online forms. So not only are instructions provided but there may also be fields that need to be completed. The above screen shot is an example.

Are the 'I would like to' pages being used?

The following table shows the number of page views over an eight week period (there are 150 IWLT pages available).

Summary

Implementing a task based intranet empowers employees and enables them to complete tasks more effectively. A task based intranet can significantly improve employee productivity through:

Sharing of best practices across an organisation, instead of being hidden in silos,
Less time spent contacting the internal service desk or employees for the answers to common questions,
Greater consistency in completing tasks,
Tasks more likely to be completed without errors, and
Tasks completed more quickly.

Intranet Governance: Ownership, Management & Policy

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 02:09:34 GMT

Who should own the intranet? Communications? IT? HR? All of them? You may be shocked to learn that many companies don’t know the answer; in fact, many organizations can’t clearly answer with any confidence whom is the present intranet owner.

As is the case with most intranets it is simply impossible to achieve any long-lasting success without a clearly defined ownership and management structure. Far from being a buzz word or jargon, intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors.

Sample governance model – large-sized financial services firm

(Source: Prescient Digital Media)

Simply put, governance defines an intranet’s ownership and management model and structure including the:

Management team
Roles & responsibilities of contributors
Decision making process
Policies & standards

Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether it’s SharePoint, IBM or another portal or content management system, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status in governance is largely applicable to any technology platform.

POLITICS

Politics and the issues of control, ownership and standards go hand-in-hand with intranet management and perhaps these issues, more than any other, have driven the requirement for planning and defined governance models. Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands to millions of dollars on their website or intranet – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.

According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey:

Only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (32% have 6,000 employees or more; 11% have 30,000 employees or more);
Of the tools and platforms being used by survey participants, a whopping 47% are using SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in some shape or form.

Politics and the issues of control, ownership and standards go hand-in-hand with an intranet in particular. Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands or millions of dollars on their intranet or website – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.

OWNERSHIP

Politics will kill your intranet. Without a well defined governance model (and should your intranet survive the naturally occurring politics of competing priorities amongst various stakeholders – communications, IT, human resources, various business units, etc.) then the value the intranet or portal delivers will be severely hampered.

“If you don’t have structure, you’re going to constantly run into politics,” said Terry Lister, Partner and Leader of IBM Canada’s Business Consulting Services. “Without a governance structure with standards, different silos try to do something in parallel (their own thing) and it costs more… and will lessen the user experience.”

Much of the problem lies in the immaturity of this nascent intranet technology. With the rational consolidation of intranet sites and services under a central site or portal, disparate departments and stakeholders such as corporate communications, human resources, IT and varying business units now must cooperate under a lone umbrella with a single intranet home page. Along with this ‘forced’ cooperation comes the predictable politics and competition for ownership of the intranet (and competition for valued home page real estate).

The problem lies with the traditional growth and evolution of the intranet. Initially, when intranets first came online in the early to mid-1990s, they were nothing more than a web brochure (a.k.a. ‘brochureware’) that sat on a small server under the desk of a Web developer who served as designer, writer and Webmaster.

GOVERNANCE MODELS

I categorize intranet governance by four broad approaches or models:

Decentralized (no single owner; do-what-you-like)
Centralized a single owner or department controls it all; highly bureaucratic; common in small organizations)
Collaborative (shared ownership via committee)
Hybrid, centralized (single owner, with collaborative accountability, decentralized content ownership)

COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE

The most common governance model in recent years, in medium to large-size organizations, has been the collaborative model. The collaborative model is most often focused on a cross-representative steering committee representing the major functional stakeholders:

Communications
Human Resources
Operations
Information Technology
Business units / departments

This model is most successful when the committee is championed by one or two key executives, often the CIO, the head of Communications, or HR. Instead of no owner, or one single owner, a collaborative team governs the intranet through the application of policies, standards and templates. This committee is typically responsible for the direction, vision, prioritization of projects, and future evolution.

About two-thirds of medium to large-size organizations have some form of collaborative governance and some form of intranet ‘steering committee’ or council. They typical committee has 6-10 individuals (mostly from IT, HR & communications) and is focused on:

Mandate and vision
Business objectives
Policies and standardization
Project prioritization
Trouble-shooting and conflict resolution

HYBRID, CENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE

The hybrid, centralized governance model is one that combines elements of all three previous models:

Centralized ownership
Centralized policy making and future development decision-making
Centralized technology and content management platforms
Decentralized content publishing and ownership
Decentralized application ownership / management

The hybrid model is very closely aligned to the collaborative model, with two significant exceptions: there is often a supporting steering committee, but it falls under a single intranet owner (or co-owners); and the role of IT is usually reduced from a collaborative owner to a committee member without ownership, but rather a support or enabler role for the business owner (often communications or HR). So while the collaborative model has a committee as the end intranet owner, the hybrid model puts the committee under an owner (though sometimes this business owner is in fact IT).

FREE WEBINAR

Learn more about intranet governance during the free, one-hour webinar on September 23 (12pm EST). Contact us directly to secure an advanced spot on the webinar.

ADDITIONAL READING

Intranet Governance

The Politics of Intranet Ownership

Collaborative Intranet Governance (Intranet Politics Part II)

Intranet management is plural

Why is the intranet so political?

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How you can help improve Oracle’s poor usability

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:58:28 GMT

When I asked Oracle, can you improve your poor usability please? I was really pleased to see how widely my views were shared. I’m not alone! It has led to Oracle re-engaging with Janus Boye (read his blog post on Oracle) and me. There is no guarantee this will lead to anything so how can we improve the usability of Oracle and other software applications?

Well, I can think of the following ways we can try:

Helping make the decisions

We need to make sure we are as closely involved as possible when our organisations decide on buying or developing a business application. It’s much harder to get a decision changed after it has been made. We also need to make sure the full costs are understood. By this I mean the productivity costs of training, helpdesk support and extra time taken using the application.

Usability standards being implemented

Embed usability standards into any procurement or development process for technology. This means any technology your organisation buys or develops has to meet these standards as well as any other technical, security or other criteria. You can be the contact point for any queries about your standards and get involved.

BT uses these usability standards for this purpose.

Proof of concept

Test out if possible the technology before it is fully developed or bought based on user needs to see what our the usability issues and how easy and costly they will be to solve. I do this with user stories which explain the business need, activity to be tested and outcome needed for it to have been met successfully.

I will keep you updated on progress with Oracle on my blog or Twitter.

Tagged: beta testing, bt intranet, governance, intranet applications, oracle, usability, usability standards, user testing

Prioritising your intranet improvement initiatives

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:53:17 GMT

Overview

These days intranet managers are swamped with ideas and suggestions for improving their intranet. These ideas can come from many sources - executives, senior managers, colleagues, intranet consultants, site visits to other intranet sites and a multitude of other research sources. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and it can be difficult to know where to start... How do you prioritize and schedule intranet improvement activities with limited resources?

Examples

I have just read a great case study about this topic - Save yourself £8m/$13m and 73 years- intranet case study. In the study, an intranet improved it's benchmark ranking from 36 out of 36 to 8 of 36 by implementing the following activities:

Resign of intranet publisher training,
Creation of a community of practice for these publishers,
Two conferences conducted for the publisher,
Development of a governance structure, and
Clean up of content removing content that was out of date, duplicated or substandard.

I think this case study highlights the need to decide how you are going measure the success (or otherwise) of any intranet improvement initiatives. I think it was Vince Lombardi who said you can't improve what you don't measure.

Allen Huish in his article, How to prioritize intranet developments, also talks about the importance of measuring the value of intranet initiatives. He lists 3 dimensions he uses to prioritize intranet developments:

Benefits - is there a measurable benefit?
Reach - how many people will benefit?
Influence - is it going to increase your influence within the organisation?

Another article - Managing SharePoint Feature Requests - asks 4 basic questions before approving a request:

How will this feature help the business?

How does this feature contribute to strategic goals?
How complex is the feature to implement?
How does the feature align with your overall portal strategy?

This article also suggests developing an online form to capture requests.

Relationship between intranet qualities and intranet value

The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) provides you with a way of measuring the effectiveness of your intranet and then prioritizing intranet improvement initiatives. When participating in the WIC, end users indicate the value they believe a specific quality adds to the intranet and then also indicate an overall value of the intranet. With this information, it is possible to determine which qualities end users consider most closely correlate with intranet value.

Correlation Diagrams

The following diagrams show the relationship between various factors and intranet value (calculated from nearly 7000 end user responses from 23 organisations).

The Correlation Value figure is calculated using the Excel Correl function. This function assigns a value that shows the relationship between two numerical lists. For example if the first list is 1,2,3 and second list is 3, 6, 9 - the correlation value will be 1.0. In other words there is a perfect positive relationship between the two lists.

The lists in the tables below are taken from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). The first numerical list contains the intranet factor (eg. Policies and Procedures) and second numerical list is the overall value end users give the intranet. The correlation value reflects the strength of the relationship between these lists.

You can use these table as a guide to identifying activities which have the most impact on improving end user value. Note that these tables are a summary of WIC responses to date and each organisation will have different correlation values.

Content V Intranet Value

The following table shows the relationship between the value of the intranet and different types of content.

Intranet Maintenance and Change V Intranet Value

The following table shows the relationship between the value of the intranet and how the intranet is maintained.

Intranet Performance V Intranet Value

The following table shows the relationship between the value of the intranet and the performance of the intranet

Participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge

If you would like to determine the specific correlation values for your intranet, then consider registering for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge.

In addition to English, the WIC is also available in:

French
Spanish
German
Estonian
Russian
Danish

What makes an intranet valuable Part 3 - (Worldwide Intranet Challenge - 1st Sep 2009)

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 01:31:25 GMT

Nearly 7000 intranet end users from twenty organisations have participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). The WIC allows organisations to obtain feedback from their intranet end users via a web based survey and then compare this feedback with other organisations.

The top 4 intranets

The top 4 intranets to-date based on feedback from their own end users are:

We will include more information about why these intranets are successful in future posts. We will also include lessons learnt from organisations who rate the highest for each question (eg. home page, finding information, online forms, discussion forums, etc). These will be part of a series called Building the Best Practice Intranet.

How are the top intranets determined?

The top intranets are determined based on end user feedback and opinion. Intranet end users complete a survey over the web and results are added to a database. All organisations complete the same questions, so the responses can be compared against other organisations.

A total value is given to the intranet by multiplying the different survey questions by weightings given to each question category by end users (ie. what do they think is important). Currently, the weightings are as follows:

Look and feel - 0.846
Ease of finding information - 1.526
Help completing work tasks - 1.010
Staff able to contribute & interact - 0.810
Quantity & quality of content provided - 1.405
Intranet change management & maintenance - 0.890
Performance & availability - 1.374
Overall value - 25.0

Correlation between survey questions & intranet value

The following tables indicate the strength of the correlation between some of the questions and overall intranet value. Values can vary from -1 (negative correlation) through 0 (no correlation) to +1 (positive correlation). The values have been derived using the Excel Correl function. The higher the number, the stronger the positive relationship. The tables below could be used to help prioritise intranet improvement activities.

The following table shows the questions relating to intranet Look and Feel and how strongly they correlate to overall intranet value.

The following table shows the correlation between questions about finding information and overall intranet value.

The following table shows the correlation between questions about employee interactivity and overall intranet value.

Participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge

If you would like to find out what your end users think of your intranet and compare this feedback with other organisations, then feel free to register for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge.

In addition to English, the WIC is also available in French, Spanish, German, Estonian, and Danish. Other languages are being progressively added. The registration form may be completed in English, German or Spanish.

Comments from participating organisations

Some comments from organisations who have already participated in the WIC include:

"extremely useful results for validation of development plan and to support engagement and change management." - Dominic Chiappe, Lloyds Register

"It was very useful and I would recommend it to any intranet manager." - Margherita Buoso, European Space Agency

"This survey is a good idea and will allow us to benchmark ourselves against other companies. We have already started to use the survey feedback to make improvements." - Barbara Peters, Wyeth

"Perfect timing for us... we will be reusing this again after we have launched phase two of our intranet roll-out project" - Matt Shepherd, Adecco Group Australia

"I think the questionnaire is really useful for many organizations." - Christian Burger, WOLF THEISS