Putting Great KM Ideas into Practice

The %tle of this session is incredibly broad – what’s ECM? And what’s a great KM idea? – We have spent many long-‐distance phone calls trying to agree a shared understanding for this presenta%on. We recognise therefore that there are probably as many ways to interpret this topic as there are of you here today. But we hope that there’s enough here for you each to take away something useful. 1

Speaker Bio: Kate has spent over 10 years designing usable informa%on spaces for the legal industry. She ini%ally took her legal educa%on to one of the early pioneers in online legal publishing, developing deep exper%se in informa%on architecture, content strategy and the design of useful, usable and engaging user experiences. In 2007, Kate started her own consul%ng prac%ce where she worked with the U.K.s leading law firms to design and execute innova%ve digital strategies. Now in Canada, Kate is a passionate advocate for puRng users first and ensuring firms have the right informa%on architecture, processes and governance to leverage their extensive technology investments. 2

Respect to Mark here for this quote that inspired our theme and we’ve used to structure our session this aUernoon 3

That quote leads us to ask: how do we turn these great blocks of marble… 4

…into something useful, beau%ful and %meless? 5

I think the answer may lie in the power of threes (and I don’t mean your three panellists…) 6

This is our ECM/KM Triangle. We have come up with what we think are 3 of the key issues within the 3 points of this triangle (Data – Tools – Vision). If you’re aaemp%ng to turn a great KM idea into something tangible then you need to make room for each of these during your project. I will make three brief points about each of these components before handing over to Karen and Mark to show you how they have put their great KM ideas into prac%ce 7

A word about triangles: whilst we acknowledge that some of our project triangles tend to force us to make compromises… 8

… that does not make them impossible to use as guides for project success. 9

So, ﬁrst up, our data. Our big blocks of marble siRng unformed. 10

As they say: if in doubt, go Dilbert. (Here’s one from September 2001 about the badness of data. Apologies to those reading these slides in handouts but I only bought the license for presenta%on use.) Our data is locked in silos. Even if we know what we own; its value is oUen unknown. Some of us are having some successes using tools to extract and analyse this data (which Mark covers in his presenta%on). 11

One of the primary reasons Dilbert’s boss can’t “manage” is because oUen our data has no referen%al integrity. It’s amazing what mashups, BI reports, and new paaerns for decision-‐making can be formed by joining data using unique keys (Client ID, Maaer ID, Document ID, TimeKeeper ID) and that allow the metadata added throughout the lifecycle to be inherited, referenced and used in new ways. One firm – let’s call them Firm Leonardo has figured this out early. Each new KM idea allows them to tackle another element of their data referen%al integrity process and clean it up. Other firms – let’s call this one Firm Donatello prefers to hide their head in the sand and will buy the next ‘silver bullet’ technology in the hope that something can auto-‐magically be done about it rather than rolling up one’s sleeves and geRng your hands dirty with the data to join it up. 12

Is there a ﬁrm leU on the planet that hasn’t realised that the quality of their data is just a bit rubbish? Dear Oscar at Old Street on my way to work in London town. Rubbish In. Rubbish Out. For Dilbert’s Boss to be able to ‘manage data’ we need to make sense of it. It needs standardizing, normalizing, reconciling. It needs untangling. It needs cleaning and cleansing to create more accurate, reliable and useful outputs on an ECM planorm (such as we will show on SharePoint or Recommind). 13

Before Leonardo, portraits of women were in profile, showing only half the face and nothing below the shoulders. Here Leonardo turns the subject almost full on towards the viewer, and includes her hands -‐ as if to say, "Here she is, all of her, fully revealed." But of course hes only shown the parts of her fit for public consump%on. The personal and private remain hidden behind that smile and those eyes. We need to know what can and should be shared with others. We need to know how to reassure lawyers that revealing some informa%on is OK. We need to find the data that is strictly private or strictly personal and lock that down. We’ve all heard the stories from firms about what can inadvertently get revealed during some of these KM/ECM projects. Mark & Karen/Suzanne also have stories to share. We can learn from these stories and examples and be prepared to build in the %me to fully analyse and crunch the data so we avoid making the same mistakes. 14

Secondly, our tools. How we’ll use what we have (or buy new ones) to get what we want. 15

As Mark says: there is more than one way to skin a cat to deliver our projects – but please not this one 16

Finally within the walls of our law ﬁrms, we now have access to some of the shiniest technologies around. Huge powerhouses of func%onality and even, shockingly, some beau%fully designed tools too. Like those working in funkier industries have been using for years. Some of these disrup%ng technologies may be, well, disrup%ve, but the same ques%ons are common to them all: -‐  What do our tools actually do? -‐  Let’s do some feature analysis; how can we get what we want from our data using these tools? -‐  How much conﬁgura%on is that going to involve? -‐  How much should we s%ck with OOTB? We know that it will simplify any upgrade process in the long-‐term but may limit us to only thinking within that “paint-‐by-‐ numbers” box in the short term. 17

Enterprise Content Management projects, of the kinds Karen/Suzanne and Mark are going to talk about, and more besides, involve integra%on. To build our intranets, portals, exper%se, maaer & client pages and extranets, KM systems, Enterprise Search, content cura%on & current awareness solu%ons, ﬁnancial dashboards and so on, all involve mashing up our data and/or integra%ng applica%ons. On the one hand we have data integra%on involving ETL tools and SQL (and therefore indexing that data as Mark will describe). While on the other we have applica%on integra%on for SOA, with API calls to systems pulling back data for displaying on a new UI (such as SharePoint that Suzanne will explain) 18

Sadly most of our tools have poor user experiences. The UIs are poorly designed. They are not usable, useful or engaging. Whilst ‘design’ is oUen forgoaen by vendors on the tools we buy oﬀ the shelf, we have the opportunity to focus on designing intui%ve user experiences on our internal projects. Not just that the interface ‘looks preay’ and matches the corporate colours, but that it is task-‐oriented for our lawyers and follows core user-‐centred design processes (more about that in a mo). 19

In my experience soUware is just a small propor%on of the total cost of introducing and running a system. We need to understand what’s really involved to deliver our projects on %me, to budget, and meet our users’ expecta%ons. We also need to remember that, as always, the tools are our enablers (even if they may be cooler and funkier tools nowadays). It is what we do with those tools that makes the diﬀerence. 20

And therefore you need a vision. You need to understand what it is you want. 21

And design maaers. We need visionaries and visions for what we want to get out of our data and use our tools for. We aaend conferences like this one and listen to the visions that others have – such as those that Karen and Mark will describe. We listen to vendors as they describe what’s possible with their tools. We read inspiring ar%cles and case studies to let our imagina%ons escape the box. Allowing us to see David within that block of marble, or a Monet on that blank canvas. Or indeed a beau%ful phone. 22

Apprecia%ng and leveraging the design skills of your team is important. The design of your solu%on both architecturally and its user interface impacts the success of your project. But as we know, law firms are a difficult place for design to really flourish; ‘design-‐by-‐commiaee’ is a derogatory term applied to anything that has been poorly designed. This problem is oUen compounded at firms where the commiaee is lacking any formal design skills so that the only topic that the team have any confidence in expressing is the colour of the UI. But while we’re not all lucky enough to have a Steve Jobs to refer design decisions to, or a professional designer on-‐staff, we can employ good co-‐crea%on or collabora%ve design prac%ces by leveraging the design skills of our team. And whilst you’ll s%ll need a final arbiter or decision-‐maker during the design process, your focus should be on finding a good cross-‐func%onal, mul%-‐disciplinary team that share the vision for the project and can work well together discussing, researching and tes%ng design op%ons. This approach will help avoid many of the pinalls of commiaee design. 23

Good IT/KM projects map core architectural and design objec%ves to the business’ needs and goals. How oUen do we hear “Make it like Google”? (Or has that now been replaced with “Make it like my iPad”?) But what does that actually mean? What are the underlying design and architectural principles that can turn the business objec%ve for ‘maaer pages’ into clear design principles, such as making sure there is lots of white space on the UI? Core design principles or ‘heuris%cs’ for designing web interfaces or search pages exist on the Web and can help inform your future decision-‐making as you design, build and test. 24

And ﬁnally, great ideas need communica%ng! You need to communicate your vision to mul%ple stakeholders throughout the ﬁrm: -‐  to the board for ongoing cost and execu%ve decision-‐making -‐  to the technical team to build the vision into something tangible -‐  to end users for buy-‐in and adop%on Designers and architects oUen use models to achieve a shared vision amongst mul%ple stakeholders, such as this one made of Christopher Wren’s early design of St Paul’s. Builders couldn’t read complicated architectural blueprints – a model like this made such shared communica%on possible. Similarly informa%on architects might draw up wireframes and other models to show the business what it is that will be built, and that also show technical teams what needs to be built. 25

OK, so that’s enough of pondering the conceptual and abstract, now onto the prac%cal… 26

And now here’s Suzanne from Ropes & Gray to discuss her ﬁrm’s great KM idea that’s been put into prac%ce… 27

Putting Great KM Ideas into Practice

by Kate Simpson on Sep 11, 2011

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Putting Great KM Ideas into Practice — Document Transcript