[Sigia-l] Site maps for web apps, vs for content sites?

[Alexander Johannesen]

On 2/10/06, Jonathan Baker-bates <Jonathan.Baker-bates at framfab.com> wrote:
> I get the impression I'm missing something fundamental in this argument,
> but why would you even *attempt* to represent workflow (or process in
> general) as well as organisation? They're two completely different
> things. Is it any wonder that most of the solutions mentioned have
> involved separating them?

Hmm, I wouldn't argue that they are *completely* different. As you
know, the organisation often has workflows that fits into that
organisation. Hang on, I feel an urge ...Oh no! It's ... one of my
soapbox items ;

<soapbox> And in my experience, organisations that have workflows that
imitates that organisation tends to get things done with less pain. I
can't provide hard evidence for this, of course, but it seems that the
politics of an organisation needs to be considered in the workflows we
set up as well. In fact, I'd counter your argument and say that in
reality they are more similar than distant, and that the more our
workflows imitate the organisation, the better; we change
organisations all the time through the people-shuffle, but workflows
have a tendency to become tasks team/people work with for some time.
Why not shift it from a "thing we plan and construct" to a "thing that
comes naturally with

As to the sitemap and workflow in one; I find it interesting, if not
as "the right thing to do" then at least as an educational learning
process. Mapping processes have *always* been challenging ('show me
what you actually do, not what you're supposed to do'), especially
when they're done with the purpose of streamlining and enhancing said
processes. </soapbox>

> On a side issue, I've never been able to grasp the popularity for
> organisational site maps. I can see they're useful as a high-level
> artefact to introduce people to the broad issues of what sort of content
> and user interactions are in scope, and roughly how they will be
> prioritised from the user's point of view. But anything more than that
> and the tree metaphor surely breaks down and becomes meaningless. Why
> are organisational site maps seen as worth of so much time?

As with any real answer; it depends. Sometimes they *are* valuable,
especially in places where hiarchy is an important facet of the
organisation. In smaller more fluid organisations, yes, they're
pointless, apart to perhaps the press and outside parties.

I work in a governmental organisation of about 500 people, and here
those hiarchies are quite important, not because we're all anal
retentive, but because the organisation *itself* is quite well
designed; the tree-structure here *means* something, it has semantics
and ownership built into it, and workflows follow quite closely that
organisational structure. It works quite well.

But hey, that's just us. What about you?


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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