Intranet Governance

Intranet governance
15 Aug 09
Maish Nichani, PebbleRoad
With help from Patrick Lambe, Straits Knowledge

Agenda
At the end of this workshop you will:

Have an actionable understanding of Intranet Governance
Learn the elements of the Governance Cycle
Use the governance cycle to evaluate 4 key areas of governance: information organisation, publishing, collaboration, apps
Guard yourself against the 7 deadly sins of an intranet rollout

Intranets today

Intranet maturity
James Robertson, StepTwo Designs

Intranet maturity
Razorfish, Microsoft, Publicis

Global intranet trends - 2009
3 downsides
3 upsides

Collaboration features and horizontal information flows are weak.
Many intranets are inflexible and risk losing their “raison d’etre”.
Dissatisfaction with search is expressed by 50 percent of the organizations.
Management is getting more involved.
Social media are slowly finding their place behind the firewall.
Dissatisfaction with search is 10 percent lower than last year!

Jane McConnell, Globally local…locally global

Worldwide intranet challenge
Worldwide intranet challenge

What is governance?

A definition
Intranet governance is framework for managing, supporting and improving the intranet.
It aligns people and technology to realise business value.

Why governance now?

From an intranet discussion group

A big driver
“As people embrace social media in their private lives, they naturally expect to use similar tools within the enterprise. This is especially true for younger workers who use these tools in everyday life. Open communication, collaboration, and content generation are as much a part of their standard toolkit as using a computer or mobile phone.”
“Taking the slow road means that companies will risk losing workers who expect innovation in the outside world to reflect directly on how they communicate at work.”
“Going for quick adoption means that companies must find ways to overcome the risks to corporate culture that adopting these tools can entail.”
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, August 3, 2009

So, why governance now?
Intranet is now considered to be a valuable business asset (finally) and is beginning to be treated as one
Staff are more dependant on digital content (and increasing so on people content)
The era of interaction & contribution is upon us

The governance cycle

Yup. It’s simple!

The strategy
Right idea (what really needs to be done)

The strategy //
Right people
Martin While, Intranet Focus
Michael Sampson, Michael Sampson Company Limited

The strategy //
Right people
Intranet owner (IT?, KM? Comms? HR?), Intranet manager
Technical team
Content strategist(s)
Information architect(s)
Usability expert(s)
…
Intranet manger, intranet champions

The strategy //
Right processes
Strategy
Policies
Procedures
Guidelines
E.g.
Who owns the news section? Who authors?
Are approvals required for common content? Who approves?
…

The strategy //
Technology
Sharepoint
Jive SBS
Ektron
ThoughtFarmer
Interwoven
FileNet
SocialText
Websphere
Altassian

The strategy //
Technology
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet

Engaging stakeholders & staff
Marketing
Training
Internal professional services

Getting feedback

BT Intranet governance model
Small central team

develop strategy and vision
keep the standards up-to-date and make sure they are enforced
provide a central set of templates for all types of content that comply with standards
manage a central set of conformance tools to check compliance

Content ownership
the person who owns the content publishes and manages it
Approval/escalation
the content owner’s manager approves requests to publish and acts if it isn’t managed to comply with standards
Mark Morrell, head of BT’s Intranet Centre of Excellence

The governance framework 4 areas of governance
Publishing
Collaboration
Information organisation
Apps

Information organisation governance

How do you answer these questions?

I can’t find the latest security policy?
How do I know what my dental benefits are?
I have two versions of these guidelines, which one should I use?
This policy dates to 1997, is it still in force?
What does form_11033.2 stand for?

Information organisation
Primary purpose:
To ensure that staff can easily and consistently find information
Need to be ready with:

Corporate taxonomy
Information architecture
Site structure
Metadata
Page layout and navigation
Collections (and their models)

Engage staff:
Build awareness (e.g. Did you know…)
Get feedback:
Anecdotal evidence
Usability testing
Card sorting

Key people
Information architect
Content strategist
Usability expert
Intranet manager

By department? By function? By task?
Finance
Procurement
Facilities
IT
How do I request for new hardware?

Pages vs. Collections
Pages
Collection
News item 1
News item 2
News item 3
…
News item n
About MyCo
Mission
Vision
Plan to conquer the world
…
Narrow by
By date
By author
By views
By tags or categories
Search

Publishing governance

Do we use British or American English?
Is it ‘email’ or ‘e-mail’?
Are there any best practices to publish procedures?
Do pages need a summary?
Can I cut-and-paste those 60 pages from MS-Word?

Publishing
Primary purpose:
To ensure that intranet content is of high quality
Engage:
Build awareness
Give training
Expose best practices, examples, non-examples
What needs to be in place:

Publishing process
Content style guide
Page templates (tasks, non-task, FAQs, etc.)
Examples, non-examples
Publishing checklists
Training guides

Get feedback:
Anecdotal evidence, Direct feedback, Usability testing, Analytics

Key people
Content strategist
Information architect
Usability expert
Intranet manager

Review publishing standards
Toward Content Quality by Colleen Jones, UX Matters

Not all content is the same
Common (formal)
Announcements, shared services…
Team or group
Work in progress, MOMs…
Social
Discussion forums, polls, open wikis…
Personal
My stuff
Mark Morrell, head of BT’s Intranet Centre of Excellence

Publishing models
Direct
Centralised
Federated

Collaboration governance

What is collaboration? And why do we need it now?
Three of us want to share project files, can we setup a file server?
I am having difficulty reconciling changes submitted by 6 people in our team, is there an automatic way of doing this?
I want to share 60MB of files, can you increase my email quota?
How do I share files with people in different departments?

Collaboration
Primary purpose:
To ensure that staff know how collaboration can benefit them and when and how they can use it.
Engage:
Build awareness
Give training (process + practice)
Showcase best practices
Offer support services

Collaboration processes
Collaboration examples, non-examples
Redefined processes
Training on collaboration features

Get feedback:
Anecdotal evidence
Analytics

Key people
Intranet champions
Intranet collaboration team
Intranet manager

Rethinking existing processes
I have 25 folders in my S-drive, how do I get the same in collaboration spaces?
I can directly send documents to my partners by e-mail, how can I do it in collaboration spaces?
I share information using e-mail, can the collaboration space capture my e-mail and archive it?

Review intranet collaboration
PebbleRoad

Apps governance

How do I create performance dashboard?
I cancelled my room booking but it still does not show that it is free.
How do I manage all the resumes we get?
How can I get key customer support data on to my page?
How can I see all staff suggestions made by a particular staff?

Apps
Primary purpose:
To ensure that apps are easy to use and fulfil required objectives.
Engage:
Study & understand requirements
Test & prototype

Good practice guides
Guidelines on using third-party applications
Application procurement guidelines
Interface guidelines
Usability guidelines

Get feedback:
Anecdotal evidence
Usability testing

Finally…

7 deadly sins of an intranet rollout
No top-level support
Low quality content
Difficult to use
No marketing
No training
No support
Low-performing infra

Activity
Which sins do we most risk committing?
Table discussion

For more info
From PebbleRoad