[Sigia-l] Re: Large Orgs

[Stewart Dean]

At 17:39 06/08/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>"Richard_Dalton at vanguard.com" wrote:
>
>For example, I'm sure every consulting IA has had this experience. You ask
>management at a large corporation to sketch out the basic ingredients of a
>site. A frightening percentage of them will throw back their org chart or
>existing product lines, as the basis of organization and presentation. They
>think this is natural and expected. They are not idiots, but the culture and
>inertia of the large org has thoroughly seeped into their psyche.
>
>In that sense, Jeff's equivocation is quite telling: he's asking if smaller
>outfits have broader choices. Even if he doesn't know, I think, he
>intuitively suspects that they likely do. And he's right.

I can only speak from my experience but I have a very telling example that 
applies directly to IA. I have worked on two sites that make computer 
printers, one medium sized and one very big one - likes call the medium one 
Dolphin and the large one Whale. I have changed the names but these are two 
real companies.

Compare Dolphin with Whale.

Dolphin as a home grown CMS system in place.  Whale is mostly hand coded.
Dolphin has a system that allows them to tailor the site locally based on a 
global IA.  Whale translates then publishes HTML centrally.

The Dolphin project built upon a project that was already some way there 
and was built in such a way we could change every single European site but 
tailoring the CMS system. We redesigned the whole IA of the site (including 
support and where to buy) so that the thing worked as a whole, the focus 
being on the products.

Whale split the site into many smaller projects that often require building 
separate product information sections (remember no CMS) even though if they 
got the central product information working well they wouldn't need 
separated products.

Result - Dolphin have a much better IA overall than Whale with more 
'business agility' (to steal one of Mircosofts/BTs terms) than the bigger 
and much more established Whale.

In my experience small companies tend to have much better CMS solutions in 
place (mostly home grown) than larger companies. Over the years I have 
become amazed how many large companies still hand code their HTML.

Unfortunately there is a link between the size of the company and the 
quality of their IA. Often what happens is rather than trying to fix the IA 
it's easier to develop microsites. Mircosites I feel are a symptom of bad 
overall IA.

Stewart Dean