Three web and user experience designers were asked by .net magazine to design an intranet home page. Each came up with innovative and useful designs and functional ideas, but also some staid and static content or redundant functions.

John Goodwin [@goders] (freelance digital designer) lays out a black and grey ‘square design’ that has the following awesome features:

• Today’s tasks;
• This week’s tasks (simply a number for each day);
• My calendar;
• My time (start / stop time logging against a task or project);
• Time spent overview (visual pie chart);
• My contact’s presence (are they online and available?).

John’s layout also includes a map of the world with markers showing where his contacts are; I’m unsure how useful this would be, and how often such a map would change in order to be of value.

What’s missing from John’s design is any sense of the company. John has called this intranet design ‘My intranet, My dashboard’ and it certainly is a personal, task-focused dashboard, but it isn’t a company wide communication platform, it doesn’t support or promote reference materials and project / company updates. Such a ‘dashboard’ design would be an awesome personal landing page or profile page, but would only be a small part of any actual intranet platform. A dashboard is not a platform, it’s a dashboard. I love it, but it’s only a fraction of the story. It may be that teams and individuals would really benefit from such an approach, but a dashboard alone would not create a ‘mature’ intranet.

Aaron McCoy [@AaronDavidMcCoy] (interactive director at Visuell) apparently shared his company’s actual intranet, so as a real case-study we can assume it meets the company’s needs in many ways.

The Visuell intranet appears to be a simple column based layout, again focused on delivering work to clients. The awesome features include:

• Time sheets (and time sheet reminders);
• Calendar / meeting prompts;
• Current projects and time booked against them;
• Task alerts;
• Links to project members’ profiles;
• Project overviews and frequent updates.

Again, Aaron’s design seems to be a project micro-site or a personal dashboard. I get no sense of the company, nor is there any indication of Information Architecture or a broad intranet (that meets diverse needs). As I said about John’s design above, it’s all fantastic as a personal dashboard or a project team mini-site, but it isn’t an intranet that I can recognise. These dashboards are obviously useful and task-focused (big ticks in my book) but are only part of the intranet definition.

Andy Kinsey [@andykinsey] (freehand web and graphic designer) shares an intranet home page idea for a hospice, so he’s already showing the idea of focusing on other people’s needs, rather than designing a personal dashboard.

The awesome features include:

• Task synopsis (‘you have 9 emails and 14 tasks to attend to’);
• Make an appointment (tool for directly arranging a meeting);
• Meeting schedules;
• Email inbox.

Unfortunately, the email inbox dominates the centre of the design, leaving only the one main image banner to communicate a campaign / event and one small ‘noticeboard’ square widget to present one news item – stuck on the far right of the page. One news item?

I love dashboards, but they’re only part of an intranet

To summarise, I feel that dashboards and task-based dynamic (real-time) information are crucially important to people and to creating an intranet that is useful and used. Providing stuff that matters to the individual (so everyone’s experience of the intranet is different, relevant) is key, and if a ‘dashboard’ approach is taken then I’m certain many people would easily perceive the intranet as a productivity tool, not a passive bulletin board. However, a dashboard that replaces the home page seems solipsistic and goes beyond the dangers of ‘silo thinking’ into the extremes of ‘individuals as islands’.

To clarify, I do not believe that ‘one home page’ can suit everyone in the company; I absolutely believe in multiple home pages for different roles across the organisation, and I often help design as many home pages as the company can define audiences.

I do accept the underlying frustration of all three designers with the quotidian pablum of top-down ‘communications’ that the Exec Board believe that ‘everyone’ must know. I understand that company news is often irrelevant, dull and of no value to many people across the organisation.

We need to design intranets, and especially home pages, that deliver task-based dynamic information and support the completion of business processes, alongside supporting sideways collaboration and up n down communication. Home page communications need to be targeted to the various audiences, not merely broadcast to everyone.

To see the three designs, check out the March 2012 edition of .net magazine (issue 225) and see if you agree with my summation. Which of the awesome features can you see working on your intranet? What should we learn from these designers’ ideas?

[Wedge]

Photo credit: Dawnhops

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Many ‘intranet users’ are actually only ever allowed to read the intranet, rather than actually use it. That does not make for an engaging intranet, nor does such a flat experience support the usual business objective of having an ‘engaged workforce’.

It’s an up-hill struggle to convince people that such a one-way intranet is a success, whereas an intranet (and culture) that encourages involvement is more likely to be seen as a successful platform for work.

I’m hosting a webinar at the end of November to discuss how to involve people, and turn ‘readers’ into ‘participants’ who value the intranet. There are many elements that make up a great intranet, but I think the focus has to be on people. In my webinar presentation and discussion you’ll get to hear me rage against the machinery of the systems based culture where we reserve the intranet for the ‘few in the ivory tower’. I mean to tackle the purposes of an intranet and how they relate to people doing stuff, not reading about stuff.

If you’re interested in creating an intranet environment that is useful, usable and used by people across your organisation, or just want to steal some tactical ideas from me about how to create a slightly more relevant intranet, please come along to my webinar. I welcome queries before, during and after the show by any and all means.

Wednesday, 30th November, 2011
3pm – 4pm GMT / 11am – 12 noon EST

Read my ranting introductory article on the subject of intranet engagement and please reserve your place on the webinar.

1. The only way to create a successful intranet – introductory blog article;
2. Register for the online webinar – (relies on GotoMeeting – very easy, minimal technical fuss).

[ Wedge ]

Photo credit: Wayne Large

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What does your intranet do for the company, for people? We could have a good discussion around objectives and purposes I’m sure. I have an idea for you that falls somewhere between ‘strategic’ and ‘tactical’, and it’s to reduce your company’s reliance upon email as a broad distribution tool and a pseudo-collaborative environment.

I don’t mean to suggest that email is evil, as email, like mail, is fantastic for private correspondence between two (or so) people. But as a distribution channel for documents of any kind it sucks; and email is demonstrably not a collaborative space.

Yes I know people are really comfortable with email, and I know people are willing to put up with lost documents, confused version numbers and out-of-date documents just so long as they have something deep within their inbox that they can get their hands on. People will put up with a lot of dross so long as they feel somewhat in control. Email provides a sense of control as it’s a channel that is given to each individual. Intranet Managers need to empower more people to make use of the intranet – not just read it.

Email creates a lot of duplicate copies of the same document. Whenever we email attachments, we keep a copy in the original location and create another copy in our ‘Sent’ folder. The recipients each have a copy in their ‘Inbox’ and might well save it to their ‘My Documents’ as well. Now I know the copy in ‘My Documents’ doesn’t really cost anything to store, but the copies in the email do cost storage space because they will be replicated on the main email server as well. And don’t get me started on how awful things get when a reviewer changes two small paragraphs and sends that version out by email to thirty people!

This isn’t solely an IT issue, and I hereby charge the Intranet Manager with the personal objective to help the company reduce its reliance upon email.

Working with IT or the Information Security officer (if you have one), get the baseline stats for number of emails sent per week / month and size of attachments. Get the baseline stats for storage space per person and department. Now you know your starting position, it’s time to change the world.

Your challenge is to help people understand, nay, believe, the following:

Email is not an archive of life nor a filing cabinet. Personal (professional) notes should be stored in ‘My Documents’ unless such material needs sharing with colleagues.

Email is not a distribution channel for business critical information. Documents and information that colleagues need access to should be published on the intranet, using appropriate security / privacy settings.

Email is not a review environment. Text and documents that require informal or formal review by peers or managers can be shared via the intranet using built-in gated review processes, or appropriate security / privacy settings. Alternatively, the ‘Shared Area’ / ‘Network Drive’ (using appropriate security / privacy settings) can be used for the drafting of documents, and a link to the folder or document can be emailed out.

The latest version of a document is always (always) on the intranet first (or the ‘Shared Area’ / ‘Network Drive’ if in draft [your choice]). Therefore, we never have to email the document around, but we can send a link to it. Senior managers who demand documents be emailed to them because they are on their Crackberry / MyPhone would benefit from mobile access to the intranet and more plain text information (rather than fancy Word documents). However, I do accept that this habit is not going to go away.

Company information is company information – we do not ask individuals to replicate and store previous versions of documents in their Inbox Archive or My Documents. The company must have document control and information archive processes in place to maintain the company’s historical knowledge.

Email is not a collaborative environment – if working with colleagues, do so online so that everyone has access to the same information and a more dynamic conversation can be had. Security and privacy (Groups / Teams) can be made available.

Email is a dead end. If you share a link or a snippet of information via email with a dozen people, it crawls into their inbox and dies. If you share the same info with your colleagues via the intranet (informal Status Updates, blog article or via their Profile Wall) then that information can be added to, reacted to and referenced again in three week’s time. Many more people can benefit from it, rather than just the dozen people that came to mind as you composed that email. The information lives on!

Tactically and strategically, these ideas help embed the intranet into your company’s culture, helping it become useful to more than a handful of content authors. These ideas also help IT and Security with their information and storage control strategies, so Intranet Managers shouldn’t feel alone in this Herculean quest, but should feel like the hero.

Go forth and do battle!

[ Wedge ]

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This is an almost live blog, I’m sat in the second row.

Software Economics – Walker Royce

Software delivery is an economic discipline, and is about managing uncertainty.

In order to optimise anything, you have to be able to quantify the current state and measure the right indicators.

Agile means accommodating change; we have to hone down the uncertainly. Less uncertainty results in more honest communication.

We unintentionally lie to ourselves about our progress and productivity capabilities. Trust is necessary, and honesty influences customer satisfaction.

Integrate:
do plan milestones and activities as demonstrable results – for testing;
avoid false precision – don’t specify what you don’t really know.

Collaborate:
base progress on executable capabilities – the demonstrable product – not activities; speculation and opinion are secondary;
don’t attack the easy things first – (hah, we always say ‘get the boulders out of the way’. There’s no economic benefit in going after the easy successes, that falsely show progress.

Quality:
quantify the cost of change to demonstrate agility;
avoid subjective and speculative measures.

Walker is talking about the importance of results, rather than activities, to assess progress. It’s evidence based, and it’s benefits based.

Software project cost forecasting – only within 25% accuracy in 3 out of 4 projects. Very uncertain for something where people expect firm prices and timeframes.

Resources = Complexity X Collaboration X Automation

Huge benefits in reducing complexity. Big benefits in improving agility. Big benefits in improving collaboration.

Investing time and money in innovation means reducing support and maintenance costs.

www.walkerroyce.com

[Wedge]

Tuesday 11 Oct 2011 – third annual conference

This is an almost live blog – I’m sat in the second row.

It was very nice to be welcomed by Mike of ‘Digital Influence’ from Olgilvy; I can’t claim to have much ‘digital influence’ myself but I am professionally interested in collaboration within the enterprise, and that certainly involves software.

Mike introduced me to Derek and Mark who were able to tell me more about the Rational suite of software. I’m obviously behind the times, because while I know something of Agile Development, the Rational suite of products is new to me.

Derek and Mark explained how developing software within the Rational IDE (Integrated Development Environment) was only part of the need, as project management and decision making is also necessary, and Rational with Focal Point does all that.

What I’m getting from this is that while non-tech people may well rely on the intranet and, sadly, email, to collaborate with each other, tech people, developers and coders have their own needs and their own suite of tools.

The Architecture for a Smarter Planet – Mike O’Rourke, VP, Offerimg Strategy and Delivery; IBM Rational

Our world is becoming more instrumented, interconnected and intelligent.

Instrumented relates to all the chips, the processors that support the core service – i.e. Cars may drive, but they’re supported by tech hardware and software.

Last year, 12% of banking transactions occurred on a mobile device. Most banks expect that to reach 50% and so are preparing.

Mike’s talking about the cloud and virtualisation, which reminds me that a lot of companies don’t want to own expensive assets and don’t want to learn complex maintenance procedures. Many companies like to focus on their core activities and outsource peripheral activities (support activities) to external experts. Risk shifting.

Mike’s talking about ‘systems of systems’ and I think I know just what he means. There is no single system that our business runs on, or that or people use. Our systems have to be integrated.

Top-performing CIOs cited integration and collaboration between IT and the business as critical success factors. I know this personally; when we ‘leave’ IT to fix / deliver things, the business often fails to adopt the end result.

The most successful companies are the one’s where more people are innovating:

1. Creating higher quality products (reduces support, complaints, maintenance);

2. Reducing time to market;

3. Reduce costs – making sure people are optimally placed to do the things they should do.

There’s something here about customer satisfaction, not just churning out cheaper products, faster.

Can software deliver innovation?

Mobile banking creates flexibility for people and institutions – but security, quality and different platform testing is necessary.

Cars contain more lines of code than a fighter jet. Is it well tested? Integrated in the hardware?

Ford have a key that restricts the speed of the driver – for your kids.

IBM, naturally, use their own software suite and approach to deliver to their customers. Y’gotta measure to know if you’re improving. The edict ‘thou shalt be agile’ plus the Rational software suite meant that ‘on time delivery’ jumped from 47% in 2006 to 95% in 2011.

Back in 2006, IBM were mostly using the waterfall project methods.

Mike admits that in 2009 they shipped 100% of products to customers, but that a couple of them shouldn’t have been shipped – that’s honest; he’d rather be at the 95% mark and make sure things are right.

IBM have an 8 year support lifecycle. Is that longer than Microsoft?

Collaboration – face to face is great, but isn’t always going to happen. A conversation about a certain change needs to be communicated to lots of other people, in India, across the globe. The tool itself must manage all this.

We can’t waste time managing a project plan and whiteboards and sticky notes (post-its) on the wall – not everyone has access to all this, and besides, the coders / developers are moving ahead right now.

[Wedge]

We strive to improve our intranets, adding functionality and honing usability. Intranet Managers are inundated with feedback, requests for features and criticism; everyone has an opinion about the intranet!

Even when we implement features and functionality at the behest of stakeholders to meet the needs of the business and intranet users, there’s no guarantee that people will care. Sometimes we launch a new feature, only to see it misused, or worse, go unused. We should be able to predict if a new function or feature will be useful, usable and adopted, but it’s difficult. Ask any marketer involved in product launches - Zune anybody?

There are a few basics we have to tick off; we need the intranet platform to support the new feature; we need the new feature to be easy to use – completely usable – and we need written governance (however brief) to layout the ownership and purpose of the feature. It should look something like:

Good Tech + Good Usability + Good Governance should = Good Usage

How can we fail? If we’ve got a modular intranet then it should be especially easy to just plug in a new widget!

But ‘good usage’ is relative; different audiences have different needs and perceive / gain value from features differently. We might be looking for a 90% adoption rate, but why? A 5% adoption for some features may be considered ‘high’, and such adoption by active users can benefit 100% of the business. If 5% of staff regularly blog about their tips and ideas about customer service, product development, intranet use and tips for effective presentations then everyone benefits. Not all features need to be used by absolutely everyone in order to be considered a success.

“Something can be brilliantly executed, but valuable to a small audience. Maybe measure usage as a % against theoretical max.”
Jonathan Phillips

There may be real reason why the new feature isn’t adopted, or proves unpopular. User Acceptance Testing may not always be appropriate, but focus groups (that don’t become ‘group think’ experiments) can help you consider all the angles.

People might have found a different way to create the same benefit with an alternative system or feature. While you might love the new feature you’ve rolled out, it may be prudent to support the popular feature, unless of course it must be retired / shut down (like unwieldy legacy systems). People are going to use whatever seems easy, convenient and most beneficial to themselves; they’re not going to switch to a new system without going through ‘change pain’ unless they can experience immediate improvements to their ways of working.

Then again, there may just be a lack of awareness about the feature and its benefits; ‘good governance’ should include good communications, but such tactical matters can’t be guaranteed without a comprehensive long-term communications plan. Too often we ‘launch and let go’ – meaning we promote the new feature in the run up to launching (over egging it perhaps) and then step back and move on to our next project. We don’t maintain momentum, we fail to follow through, and we then wonder why people haven’t heard about our wonderful thing-a-majig three months later.

People need to be shown (not told) the purpose and benefits (to them) of a feature, through examples and narratives. Not only do we need to embed the new feature into the heart of the intranet through regular use ourselves (how many times have you launched a themed blog only to have the articles dry up after three weeks?) but we need to apply good communications theory to the subject. We need to tell different audiences in different ways in different formats, multiple times.

Thanks to @jenetics, @jencutler1, @stuartamckenzie, @simoneverest and @digitaljonathan for their thoughts on this subject. I take credit for any errors or poorly worded ideas herein.

[Wedge]

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This is the big one; while I might have convinced intranet managers to put pen (or crayon) to paper, sketch out the conceptual vision for the intranet and lay down the roadmap for improvements, documenting the intranet strategy is harder.

The intranet strategy shouldn’t be a gargantuan, complicated, document, even if it discusses some complex requirements. The intranet strategy can be presented as a number of points with supporting explanations and examples, it doesn’t have to be a dry, dull, business document. But it does have to meet a few criteria in order to be useful.

Firstly, a strategy isn’t a list of goals and tactics. Crafting the future of your intranet requires strategic thinking, and an understanding of where your company is going over the next few years. Everyone feels that business changes at the speed of thought these days, and organisations are always undergoing some kind of ‘change management’ process. A strategy needs to be able to weather all that stuff, for the next couple of years are certainly not going to be any smoother!

Strategies express ‘how’ to approach matters, with long-term overarching goals in focus. Strategies provide context and frameworks for decisions and tactical actions. Certainly the intranet should have objectives, and measurable deliverables / key performance indicators — but the strategy itself, the pure strategy, should focus on the overall direction of the intranet, not on the day-to-day running of the system.

In my opinion, the most important point is to ensure the intranet strategy reflects, supports and complements the business strategy. Intranet and Comms managers need to be close enough to the business (ear to the ground) and to the business leaders in order to fully understand the company as it is and as it will be in the future. The only way for the intranet to truly demonstrate its worth is if it makes reaching business goals easier, if it supports core (and peripheral) business activities.

In light of this crucial element, the intranet objectives should support the business objectives. I don’t mean they should be a like-for-like repetition, or a close shadow, I just mean that the intranet objectives should be seen to address the business objectives directly.

The business strategy and objectives are published and referred to, aren’t they? (Of course they are, how silly of me to ask.) And so the intranet strategy and objectives will be published too, along with all the governance guidance.

So what’s that? The intranet strategy must be informed by the overall business strategy, it must be supported by objectives and metrics and it must be published and referred to, in order to have any value or affect. OK, but what’s in it?

Contents of your strategy

This is why it’s such a challenge to craft a strategy that everyone around the business can get behind. Just what goes in it? Where do you start?

Start by reading your intranet vision. Then think about what the business would like to see more of, and less of.

Would you like to increase the speed to market of your products? Would you like to improve the quality (and firmness) of your decision making? So you then want to increase and improve collaboration and communication on the intranet, and reduce sending uncontrolled valuable documents around by email.

Would you like to improve the culture of the business, or help two previously separate companies merge to become truly one? Then you’ll want to provide faster, more relevant communications and help people break out of their silos and work with others; you’ll want to help people connect with others based on their skills and project experience, and open up collaboration opportunities.

Would you like to streamline business activities, cut paper and reduce the time to process requests? Then you’ll want to implement end-to-end online task completion and self-service on the intranet, focusing on usability and business impact.

Furthermore, how empowered do you wish people to feel and to be? Your strategy should lay out how you mean to ‘control’ or ‘enable’ people’s work online. Do you mean to centralise control within the intranet and comms team, or will you decentralise ownership and publishing across the business over the next 18 months? Do you want 90% of people managing their own Word documents, or do you want just 10% of people allowed to manage project documentation, leaving the rest to muddle through with shared drives and email?

Look at your governance model now, and lay out how you’ll support or change the model over time.

I could go on and on; I haven’t even touched on engaging senior manager and different departments to make sure the intranet strategy reflects needs from across the business. I haven’t discussed ‘walking it around’ to gain buy-in and support from leaders.

What’s the biggest challenge? Making your strategy matter; too many stakeholders will be happy for the intranet to just ‘chunter along’ with no investment of time, effort or money. I didn’t say it would be easy, I just said it would be the truth.

Like I said, this is a big one; but don’t let its importance destroy your momentum. Reference the vision, refer to the roadmap, and craft your first draft. It can always be improved, but you need it written, agreed and published now.

This little article is part of a series on intranet governance, and is meant to guide intranet managers to create improvements in how the intranet is managed, used and perceived.

1. Intranet vision;
2. Intranet roadmap;
3. Intranet strategy;
4. Executive sponsor;
5. Steering Group / Intranet Council;
6. Governance model;
7. Governance that is communicated.

[Wedge]

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Intranets can be unwieldy dynamic systems, with hidden depths and wide flatlands of undiscovered joy or horror. If, as the intranet manager, you’re at the end of your tether with the lacklustre technology, departmental adoption or the dearth of management support, my advice is to seek some small wins to bolster people’s perceptions of the intranet and your management of it.

Sure, that new recognition and reward programme that HR have been screaming for isn’t off the ground yet because the identity authentication process is screwed up and IT keep saying it’s got something to do with ‘Active Directory’ and ‘keys’, but don’t let that destroy your vision for the intranet. Don’t let these badly managed massive projects derail the continuous improvements your intranet’s roadmap lays out.

Seek the small; look for the easy wins that match your people’s personalities

Before thinking about bespoke development for massive solutions, look around and see if there’s an off-the-shelf widget or module for your intranet that can meet your basic needs. There’s no shame in browsing a list of widgets and then deciding you ought to have one! Yes, I’m against ‘whistles and bells’ but there’s nothing wrong with implementing attractive features on your intranet if you can justify it by the end result.

What I’m saying, in a ‘round about fashion, is that rather than implementing no improvements this quarter simply because the budget won’t be approved for that thing head office want, you should implement some small, meaningful improvements that your people can get their hands on. Focus on immediate benefits; focus on people’s online habits. Think about the feedback you’ve received over the last year; think about all those ‘wish lists’ that people talk about when they discuss their work. Don’t seek perfection; perfection kills good concepts. What small idea can you realise that will get people talking about the intranet?

Small improvements can have big effects. Imagine if you spend 30 hours on task analysis exercises, where you ask people to perform some specific tasks on the intranet and watch / record there actions. You’ll learn how convoluted people’s clicks are when they’re trying to do something new online, and so you’ll be able to reduce those clicks my clarifying your navigation or creating some new links / reducing links. Imagine if you spent £1000 on refining the look n feel of your intranet, not so that it looks cooler, but so that the design of the intranet improves the usability of the intranet by (perhaps) increasing the contrast of content or content areas?

Or, what if you took it upon yourself to always always always have the restaurant menu online and up-to-date without fail? Or numbers and menus for the local sandwich shops. Or car park details. Or the lottery, or football (not my bag; like the weather, I feel the web does these jobs).

Whatever your people would appreciate, do. It really doesn’t have to be a big thing; the big things are expected. That’s just business. It’s the little things that people fall in love with.

What’s your little idea that could transform your intranet?

[Wedge]

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