TFPL,
Senior Consultant
TFPL,
Senior Consultant
Posted by TFPL on 16 April 2010 at 10:32 in Information Architecture, Knowledge Management, Records Management, SharePoint | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
I recently made a trip to Microsoft for a workshop on SharePoint 2010 at their campus in Reading. The picture I took away is of a shift in focus away from development to configuration (and there's a hell of a lot more to configure), illustrated by the following:
On cost, for organisations that have made a sizable resource commitment to MOSS 2007 already, the prospect of further investment in SharePoint 2010 might initially be a turn off[*]. If however they are persuaded by the additional functionality (particularly in what was formerly business intelligence, the records centre and mySite) then they still face the requirement to upgrade their hardware to x64 (currently it is x32). This x64 backroom hardware is needed to effectively accommodate technologies such as ajax which make for seamless and smooth user operability on the client side but demand significant resources from the servers to that end. This demand scales up with increases in user numbers and user activity, which will be a significant consideration if organisations start adopting SharePoint as a “full featured business platform”, as Microsoft is touting it.
Additionally, upgrade/migration from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint was not something that was readily covered and I suspect 2007 users may be in for a rougher ride, price-wise and technically, than they might otherwise have expected. This may be a particular issue to those organisations that invested heavily in 3rd party bespoke development of the product.
So, how significant is the advent of SharePoint 2010 to the information professional? Well, we have always known that information architecture, information governance (inclusive of its pillars such as policies, rules etc) and sound information management in general are critical to the success of any electronic information system deployment. And, with the removal of significant functionality barriers in SharePoint 2010, the continued importance of this cannot be stressed enough in giving systems administrators something to consider before bending to every whim of their users.
It is therefore critical that the advice of the information professional is heeded at the highest levels of management and engendered into the IT psyche. The blueprints of a successful implementation should be drawn up, highlighted, championed and followed from the very beginning, lest the onset of “SharePoint Sprawl”, a symptom of poor information architecture and a lack of information management forethought, generally; and one with which many, if not most, MOSS 2007 implementations contend.
If you have information management concerns around your deployment of SharePoint, or any other system, contact us for expert advice and solutions.Authored by Shooresh Golzari, tfpl consultant.
[*] Recent conversations with clients and SharePoint integrators indicate that this is true.Posted by TFPL on 15 December 2009 at 16:18 in Information Architecture, Knowledge Management, SharePoint, Web 2.0, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
“Most current software is focused on general enterprise needs rather than user-specific needs, The opportunity for business and IT leaders is to understand how the individualization of work will affect businesses, critical processes, innovation and interenterprise collaboration. End-user preferences will decide as much as half of all software, hardware and service acquisitions made by IT.”
Posted by JamesLappin on 08 December 2008 at 15:21 in Information Architecture | Permalink | Comments (1)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
As 2008 begins, TFPL consultants reflect on the projects we have worked on over the past 12 months and outline the key information challenges that our clients have asked us to address as a pointer to the trends for the coming year.
Content management
Our consultants were involved in several intranet redesign projects as well as taxonomy strategy and development projects. The common theme was intelligent information architecture, making content better organised and described to bring it and users together in a more natural and efficient way – to the benefit of the business AND the user.
Intranets are key resources for organisations, and TFPL helped a number of national organisations review and redesign theirs to work both as a communications channel for the business and as an efficient business application, serving up everyday information. This process needs skills to look at both the user-focused (i.e. the layout of pages) and the content-focused,( i.e. the metadata profiles and attendant controlled vocabularies) elements.
Taxonomies continue to be important: there effective design allowing users to manage and navigate content systems and aids retrieval using search engines. Extending these classification aspects with resource discovery and dynamic publishing of content we are beginning to allow Information Discovery with content related to other similar content through well created and managed metadata.
Aligned to information architecture work has been a growing need from organisations to manage the complex task of migrating unstructured web content from disparate sites into centrally managed content management systems. We have managed content migrations for a large government deparment and a global law firm. TFPL have developed a methodology to assist our clients through a content migration, covering:
Knowledge management
There has been much interest this year in the development of information and knowledge strategies to support the business objectives resulting from changing trends in external economic, social and technical advances. These drivers have led to:
We have conducted information and knowledge audits and strategy development projects for government agencies, local councils, and the not-for-profit sector. Organisations are reviewing how they manage and deliver information to ensure that K&IM strategies and services are aligned with business objectives. They are looking to rationalise the procurement of published material and working to deliver internal information effectively as well as seeking to avoid silo working
Our consultants spend time talking to staff across the organisation, using a variety of methods to better understand:
In nearly all of our client organisations we found that people were spending too much time trying to find the information ‘they knew was there somewhere’. . Clients were also interested in how other organisations have addressed these issues so that good practice methodology can be adopted straight away.
The range of our IM/KM work across all the sectors has enabled TFPL to share experience and know-how with our clients and to work with them to build a vision for information and knowledge management.. In many cases TFPL has gone on to support clients through the implementation and evaluation of the projects.
Information service reviews
We have worked with in-house information services to ensure that the services and products offered are fresh and relevant. Challenges facing information services include:
Records management
The demand for records management consultancy during 2007 remained very strong across the government sector and clearly re-emerged in the private sector as organisations realign their information and records management programmes to meet changing external demands and set out to realise the benefits of technologies. Building good RM practices into the electronic records management arena still poses a challenge for many and TFPL is supporting a number of EDRM designs and implementations.
Small to medium sized organisations are attracted by the Microsoft Sharepoint offering which is considered an attractive alternative to traditional RM applications and are showing increased interest in using collaborative and social media tools.
Bringing sense to the e-records environment still requires the understanding of the connectivity between the governance frameworks, information architecture, user friendly corporate fileplans with appropriate metadata frameworks and controlled vocabularies. TFPL is meeting the growing demand for making sense of and integrating legacy records into the new e-environment through migration and rationalisation of applications that hold records. Developing and applying retention schedules for legal and regulatory compliance across all organisations has also featured in this year's consultancy projects.
2008 is widely expected to see a tightening of belts across all sectors. In this climate, efficiency in business is essential and good decisions can only be taken with the right information at hand. TFPL consultants can help your business put it's Information Management strategies and practices in order.
Posted by TFPL on 02 January 2008 at 15:30 in Information Architecture, Knowledge Management, Librarianship | Permalink | Comments (0)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
TFPL regularly runs training events for its temporary recruitment candidates.
Last night, over 30 of then heard Alan Flett describe how psychological theories and methodologies, coupled with computer-based analysis, can help us understand users' mental models and build better information architectures. This is done by using psychological interview approaches with users and analysing the outputs via computer aided clustering techniques.
The outputs can be used to inform information architecture design. The results are evidence based, user focused taxonomies and wireframes etc that are capable of evolution and refinement.
For more information on 'psycho' information architecture contact alan.flett@tfpl.com. For more information about temps training events, contact katy.crosse@tfpl.com.
Posted by TFPL on 25 May 2007 at 12:14 in Information Architecture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
A client, embarking on the roll out of a new Content Management System in 2007, asked me for an opinion on the potentially thorny problem of classifying a large set of existing content.
The answer is, “well, there are a many ways to attack it.” So I thought I’d
share my points of view on it:
Manual classification
For large content sets or for
multiple and or large taxonomy structures, an automatic classification system
might be the best approach. However, the trade off is typically the effort
required “up front” to develop the tagging rules.
There are a number of software
applications which in one form or another build up rule sets to apply to the
language of a document and return one or more tags (dependant on the setting of
a threshold value). This process can include:
However, for some of the known
taxonomies, like the UK government sponsored Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV) there are off-the-shelf classification systems that can be
employed directly.
The type and format of the content
is also a major factor:
It's certainly a challenge, but there are options out there and the improvement in search and retrieval with well classified content set is a worthwhile benefit.
Posted by Milo on 05 January 2007 at 10:04 in Information Architecture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
For anyone who has not already seen it, have a look at Ms Dewey, this is a young, attractive and rather sexy search engine – it is fully animated with results pulled in from Live.com. Read Phil Bradleys review for the nuts and bolts of the search function and usability. Ms. Dewey is played by actress Janina Gavankar.
Posted by Sheetal on 25 October 2006 at 10:56 in Information Architecture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
Following the focus group we ran last week we have been using the results to prepare a preliminary draft information architecture for the site. Our client was disappointed with the turnout at the focus group. However, from our perspective it was a success; we were able to gain many insights into how the audience uses the site and what they really want when they visit the site. These nuggets are invaluable in adding meaning to the survey and interview research we have already completed. The interaction between participants gives a perspective that doesn’t come from speaking with individuals.
It takes the emphasis away from the “clever” information architecture and taxonomy ideas and puts it firmly on the content itself. There are some recent posts exploring this theme.
In his post on goal based retrieval, Joe Lamantia discusses common goals of information retrieval (e.g. reviewing summaries of items, understanding contexts and situations) and the different modes of retrieval or interaction that would meet these goals.
Maish Nichani has written about the idea of focussing on the users’ target content in his excellent post “Taming your target content”.
This approach is helping to define the vague content types mentioned by the audience e.g. “news”, “updates” to something more specific, with the surrounding context to add deeper meaning to a single piece of information.
Posted by HelenStewart on 28 July 2006 at 10:34 in Information Architecture | Permalink
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
Working as a consultant, one of the my favourite activities is running workshops and focus groups. Listening to people discussing thier work, their likes and dislikes and ideas is always fascinating.
Yesterday we ran a focus group for a client which involved a card sorting exercise. The objective was to obtain feedback from the organisation's members about their information expectations and use of the website. Before the exercise we had an in depth discussion about the current home page, talked about the navigation and content. When we came to the card sorting the participants were completely floored by four of the terms. "environment".... what does that mean? "property" ...huh??!!
Interestingly, these four words were smack bang in the middle of the main navigation that we had just looked at in detail. They had said the navigation made sense to them and they used it regularly, yet the words out of context meant absolutely nothing to them.
User-centered design - 1: Guesstimating - 0
Posted by HelenStewart on 21 July 2006 at 12:17 in Information Architecture | Permalink
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
A folksonomy is an information retreival tool created by allowing users to 'tag' information resources with whatever words they want to remember them by.
The folksonomy approach is very different from the controlled vocabulary approach (taxonomies, classifications, thesauri, ontologies). The debate between advocates of the two approaches has, unsuprisingly, been polarised.
For the views of people on both sides of the debate see Clay Shirky's Ontology is overrated and the robust response of Peter Merholz Clay Shirky's viewpoints are overrated
The Librarians Guide to Etiquette has put a humorous spin on this polarisation. It told librarians that they could induce panic into their library committees by making the following suggestion:
''What if we eliminated the use of costly Library of Congress Subject headings in favour of patron-initiated tagging and social bookmarking in our catalogue?''
The Penn Tags project at the Library of the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) gives an interesting way out of this divide. The library is allowing their users to add their own tags to catalogue entries, and thus generate their own reading lists.
The result is that searchers have two new ways into the catalogue: as well as the classification and search routes offered by the catalogue itself you now can search on:
This combination of classification and folksonomy could have powerful applications within organisations. We do need classification structures in our intranets and record systems. But folksonomies are good at two things that classifications are not good at, namely:
At Penn library the tags that users apply to catalogue entries will have a similar relationship to classification terms in the catalogue as do non-preffered terms to preffered terms in a thesaurus. They will link the language(s) that people actually use in the University to the necessarily artificial language of the classification.
And when new topics emerge that are of interest to people in the University, these topics will be reflected in the words that students and lecturers use when they tag those resources in the library that are relevant to that topic.
Posted by JamesLappin on 19 July 2006 at 16:18 in Information Architecture | Permalink
Reblog (0) | | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us |
Recent Comments