[Sigia-l] Re: Large Orgs

[Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com]

Stewart,

I appreciate you sharing the anecdotes, but I disagree with your 
analysis.

You said:
"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. Microsites I feel are a symptom of 
bad 
overall IA."

I work for a very large company.  We are very diverse and operate in a 
number of industries.  We have businesses in over 65 countries.  We have 
lots of web sites.  The complexities involved in undertaking an 
"Enterprise IA" are absolutely mind-numbing.  

Consider just these few points:
- Legal and regulatory differences between business units and 
geographies (e.g. The EU has different requirements for privacy and 
financial services have different regulations from food processing)
- Language and cultural differences.  Not just from a end-user 
(customer) perspective, but from an internal business unit perspective 
and from the perspective of the CMS user (author, editor, etc.)
- Difficulties of collaboration and consensus as the number of 
"stakeholders" increases.
- Etc., etc., etc.


The fact is it's not Large company = bad IA, but rather Big company = 
big, nasty puzzle to solve from an IA standpoint.  Take a look at sites 
like ge.com, 3m.com, IBM.com nestle.com, dow.com.  Now imagine you are 
an IA at one of those companies.  How would you approach a redesign, 
even assuming you had unlimited resources and authority to implement 
what you wanted?  How fast can you get it done?  What kind of budget 
would you need?  How much time from other people?  Does your head hurt 
yet?

Microsites are evidence of people biting off what they can chew.  
Consider also that Microsites can be very effective at helping users 
too.  For example: 

Volvo Construction Equipment
http://www2.volvo.com/constructionequipment
(compared to http://www.volvo.com/)


GE Mortgage Insurance (owned by GE)
http://www.ge-mi.com/
(compared to http://www.ge.com/)

Enterprise IA is a huge undertaking for big companies.  CMS is easier 
for smaller, less complex sites.  And only just mention the ROI of 
eBusiness issue...the fact that this stuff costs money and should 
deliver enough benefit to warrant investment in (say) a CMS instead of 
(say) a new operating plant or truck or sales rep.


Think you're a great IA at a small company?  Go try tackling a "whale" 
and really test your skills.  What you'll find is it's not your Visio or 
metadata or navigation design skills that are most important.  It's 
things like selling, educating, collaborating, etc. that help you make 
an impact.  :)

There's a reason Lou's offering this:
http://louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/seminars/eia/

This is also excellent on the topic:
http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/presentations/020316-ASIS&T.ppt

Regards,

Lyle

----
Lyle Kantrovich
User Experience Architect
Cargill 
http://www.cargill.com/

Croc O' Lyle - Personal Commentary on usability, information 
architecture and design.
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." 
	- Leonardo da Vinci
 

-----Original Message-----
From: stewart at webslave.dircon.co.uk
[mailto:stewart at webslave.dircon.co.uk]
Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 8:39 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] Re: Large Orgs

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