Following up on my last blog about CMS Woes. Here are some thoughts about Intranets
Don’t get hung up and branding an internal site. If you doing more than picking the best background color and then adding your logo, you are doing too much. Your Intranet is there to help share knowledge, not as a branding exercise.
Keep it, “In the Box” first. Then look to open it up to custom development. By doing this, you need to be flexible. For example, you need to let the system do what the system does.
If you are using a 3rd party platform, learn what the nice to haves are. For example, the people that like to wirer frame out an Internet, never seem to know about some of the nice features that MOSS has to offer. Case in point if the MOSS MySite functionality. Like or Hate Microsoft, they have spent more money trying to figure out some nice things an Intranet should have. Make sure the person that is helping you build your site knows to include what you get out of the box basically for free.
Do give the users control. Do not let the IT department choose to lock everything down. All to often we will see things get locked down because a user a year or so ago did something that caused a support person to have to work late one day to resolve. As as result, a bad decision is made to make sure that person never has to work late again at the cost of removing rights from users. For users to use the system, they need to be allowed to make mistakes.
Do not get caught up in Analysis Paralysis. It is better to get something out the door quickly and manage it versus design it on paper for a year and never roll it out.
Prototype early. This plays into the above point. Err on the site of time to market.
Give the user value. If users are not getting what they want, they will not use the Intranet. Most Intranet fail becuase users do not see the value. Publishing Stories about one high level manager getting a promotion does not provide interest to anyone other than the manager getting the promotion and the person asked to write about it.
Know your Numbers. Know who is looking at your site and why. Know the trend..its is growing or shrinking.
Know what people are searching for. Know what they are finding and know what they are not finding. Then take action to make sure what they find gets better and what they are not finding gets satisfied.
