Why would I, as an intranet consultant and the owner of a firm specializing in intranet consulting, try and dissuade you of hiring said consultant? Well, it’s still ski season here in Vancouver and there’s epic ‘pow’ at Whistler this year… combined with an intense sleep deficit wrought by a newborn baby at home (who likes to eat A LOT past midnight)!

 

No, in reality, I want to spend more time studying all of the subtle nuances and politics in this particular Survivor series… No seriously, there are two good reasons (and a whack of lesser reasons) why you would not hire a consultant:

 

1-     Limited budget

2-     “Knowledge is power”

 

Knowing what makes a powerful intranet and putting that knowledge to practice should be a requisite of any intranet or portal manager.

 

Australia-based Step Two Designs has released version 1.1 of The Intranet Review Toolkit. The toolkit is free and it’s designed to empower intranet managers with a comprehensive set of heuristics (guidelines) for evaluating an intranet.

 

Coinciding with this release, a new home for the Intranet Review Toolkit – released under a Creative Commons license – has been established at:

 

www.IntranetReviewToolkit.org

 

This site provides a central clearinghouse for resources related to intranets, including:

 

  • The latest version of the Intranet Review Toolkit
  • A commentary on the heuristics in the Toolkit, along with links to supporting resources, reports and books
  • A simple mechanism for providing feedback or suggestions

 Step Two Designs, one of the lead authors of the Review Toolkit, has high hopes for the toolkit. “This will hopefully grow into a definitive resource for intranet teams, going beyond just explaining and supporting the Toolkit,” says James Robertson, one of the lead authors and Managing Director of Step Two.

 

This is a resource that every intranet team should download, to get a "health check" for their intranet. Comments and suggestions should then be posted on the site, to help the team at Step Two further grow the resource.

 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media