The User Experience Design Group at Ultimate Software in For Lauderdale is looking for UI Designer.  Ultimate has been using agile methods (Scrum) for over one year.

If you already live in the Fort Lauderdale / Miami area, details on the position are available on the company website (www.ultimatesoftware.com).

Most intranet discussion forums fail. Some succeed, but not as a rule.

In When intranet discussion forums work James Robertson writes that effective forums work when there exists a clear purpose and an existing and motivated community:

"The first critical success factor is that there must be clear purpose or reason for staff to use the discussion group.

Staff must be able to see that their posts will have a direct impact on a particular issue, or will provide some tangible benefit (for the organisation, or for other staff).

All too often, online forums are put up to 'discuss an issue', or to provide a 'forum for feedback'. Without a clear statement of what will be done with the input gained, the forum may be viewed as even less relevant than the many surveys that are sent out within most organisations.

Staff are also busy, with a responsibility to focus on their day-to-day job. This makes it hard to justify contributing to a discussion forum that does not have a clear purpose.

In practice, the greatest participation is gained when the use of the discussion forum directly benefits an individual's job or situation (the 'what's in it for me' factor)."

Perhaps the most successful intranet discussion forums project was the 2003 ValuesJam at IBM. ValuesJam was a 3-day, “global interactive brainstorm session” held on the IBM intranet discussion boards. The online discussion centered around four topics related to corporate values. The response was huge:

• 22,000 participants
• 9,337 original posts
• 1.25 million+ views of ValuesJam and related content

Senior management at IBM “believed that the only meaningful way to shape values for a global on demand enterprise like IBM — with its population of independent, 21st-century knowledge workers — was to trust that population to shape those values itself.”

A host of suggestions were made for improving IBM operations, workforce policies and relationships. As a result, the best 35 ideas — as rated by IBM employees — are being implemented.

Great intranets are rarely done solely in-house. There’s too much at stake and the intranet is far too political to not take advantage of a non-partisan intranet consultant with relevant expertise.

There are advantages to doing it yourself:

• Costs less cash out of pocket
• Internal stakeholders are forced to learn the ropes
• Internal jobs are reinforced

The disadvantages of doing it yourself are obvious:

• Lack of skill and experience
• Lack of people to execute
• Internal politics on what and how to do it
• Time away from day-to-day work

To hire an intranet consultant, visit Prescient Digital Media to see their intranet consulting services.

Politics

The greatest barrier to an intranet’s potential is politics. Technology and budget are secondary barriers. The intranet is a political football.

Why? Most intranets don’t grab the attention of executives. The intranet is left to middle managers in communications and IT with limited budget and power. Conflict ensues and the intranet stalls – often for years.

Resolving conflict and breaking the subsequent limbo requires senior management support and participation. Where politics runs thick, a collaborative governance model is strongly urged.

Tearing down the political barrier often requires a third-party consultant with lots of expertise and no political axe to grind, but an arsenal full of best practices. If communications tries to lead the process, the other stakeholders will be suspicious. Ditto for IT and HR. If budget allows, everyone respects an experienced and capable mediator.

People

Building or redesigning an intranet requires a lot of work. It can take months or years. If you decide to build or rebuild the intranet, who will be minding the store?

An intranet requires:

• Employee input (research)
• Best practices intelligence (benchmarking)
• Business requirements analysis and documentation
• Strategic planning (mission, objective, goals, CSIs)
• Functional planning (structure, content, etc.)
• Governance model
• Policies and guidelines
• Business case and ROI
• Content management & migration
• Information architecture
• Layout
• Design
• Tools
• Staffing
• Technology implementation
• Network and database administration
• Integration
• Writing
• Etc.

Hiring an intranet consultant will free-up the necessary time to stay on top of the day-to-day job you were hired for – the daily news, benefits enrollment, new application rollouts, etc.

Finally, does your team have the skills? Have they ever developed a governance model, an editorial policy. or an LDAP integration plan?

How to hire an intranet consultant

If you have a budget and a work culture that recognizes the value of an outside intranet expert then proceed with caution.

Caution: an Internet consultant is not an intranet consultant. A web design firm has deep creative skills, but rarely has any business acumen and intranet expertise. A big-five consulting firm has very smart people but is very expensive.

Identifying the right intranet consultant

Prepare a thorough and detailed RFP (request for proposal). Invite companies that have proven experience and case studies. If you don’t know one (though you should know several if you read this news blog) then look for a recommendation:

• Ask a leading company or partner
• Sniff around your local trade associations like IABC or PRS
• Phone your IT analyst at Garner or Forrester
• Google the phrase “intranet consultant” or “intranet consulting” with or without geographic locations (if that’s important to you)
• Post a comment here and I or another reader will help steer you

The RFP responses from any intranet consulting firm should contain the following:

• Line by line details of every process and deliverable
• Intranet consulting history and overview
• Detailed client case studies
• Solution functional specifications
• Consulting, licensing (if applicable) AND implementation costs
• Project team resumes, skills overview & experience
• Client references and contact information
• Detailed timeline and schedules
• Ongoing service & support commitment
• Solution technical specifications (if applicable)
• Product demonstration (if applicable)

A final word: Google before you hire a particular intranet consultant or intranet consulting firm. I’m a little bias because I write a lot, have the top blog dedicated to intranets and speak at a lot of conferences, but I like to see for myself the ‘thought leadership’ credentials of the consultant. A great intranet consultant is not only experienced, but a leader with published credentials to support it.

Top intranet consulting firms:

• Prescient Digital Media (North America & Europe)
• Step Two (Australia & South Asia)
• Intranet Focus (United Kingdom)

Note: obviously there are far more consultants than this… but actually surprisingly few that focus namely on just intranets. So yes I’ve left a few out, but this is not intended to be a consultant directory but an article (also note that the author hasn’t used his own name).

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© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media