[Sigia-l] Intranet strategies and fundamental assumptions - to portal or not to portal?

[James Robertson]

At 02:06 14/03/2003, Lamantia, Joseph C. wrote:

>My team is in the midst of strategizing and defining the scope of our 
>intranet redesign effort, and I thought I would invite comment on our 
>thinking by the rest of the list - while our major assumptions and 
>decisions are still malleable.
>
>A quick outline of the situation:
>
>Large software firm (~4000 employees and $800 million in revenue) in the 
>midst of major product line and business shifts needs to re-architect 
>intranet to reflect new needs of employees and new business strategies, 
>improve usability, support rapid growth of knowledge content, etc.
>
>At the moment, we're leaning toward a concept that I would quickly 
>summarize as "a portal-style interface into a knowledge sharing platform 
>that is designed and deployed - UI, taxonomy, CMS - by a small central 
>team, but fed with content by the community of employees within the firm"
>
>Ignoring the business-ese, this concept reflects (at least) four broad 
>assumptions:
>
>1 - knowledge sharing is an appropriate over-arching goal of an intranet 
>for a firm like this
>
>2 - portal style interfaces a la myMSN, myYahoo, etc., are, or can be, 
>effective for these purposes
>
>3 - it is possible to establish centralized tools to support points 1 + 2 
>in a tightly siloed and somewhat cranky cultural environment
>
>4 - employees will - or will be able to - access and contribute 
>high-qualilty reusable content within a system like the above

Hi Joe,

I realise I am a full calendar month late in
responding to this thread, as I've only just had
a chance to catch up on my backlog of 3000+ usability/IA
e-mails...

First off, I wouldn't jump straight towards considering
technology solutions (ie portals), and would encourage
you to focus on business needs.

For that reason, I would encourage a phase of stakeholder
interviews and requirements gathering, as outlined in
this article:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_renewintranet/index.html

I would then develop a set of business goals for
the intranet, which should be aligned with broader corporate
strategy. See this weblog entry for a selection of goals:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/000384.html#000384

I've also written a paper on the benefits/risks of both
the centralised and decentralised models:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_decentralised/index.html

Finally, here are a few ideas about how to promote
your intranet, to increase usage and visibility:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_promoting/index.html

(Sorry for so many links to articles, it's just that I've
written a lot in this space, and I find it helps to cut down
on the size of e-mail responses.)

Hope all this is of some use, and good luck with your
project.

Cheers,
James


-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd

Knowledge Management / Content Management / Intranets

http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr at steptwo.com.au