Migrating A Corporate Intranet To Microsoft Share Point
- 1. Migrating a Corporate Intranet to Microsoft SharePointBy Jen Hocko
- 2. TopicsWhat is SharePoint?What is MathWorks doing with SharePoint?How is Usability involved?What challenges have we faced?What have we learned?Q&A
- 3. What is SharePoint?A platform that allows people to:Collaborate in a web-based environmentBuild portalsSearch and manage content (CMS)Manage business processes (workflows and forms)Assemble business intelligence dataDevelop custom modifications to extend functionalityAnd more!Sigh….
- 4. What are we hoping to do with SharePoint?Consolidating and upgrading collaboration toolsMaking users more self-sufficientImproving findability (searching and browsing)Creating an infrastructure that will support us for years to come
- 5. How has Usability been involved?Beyond the initial pilot (a few years ago), we’ve been involved in many different ways.The model has been to migrate department by department rather than in one fell swoop.
- 6. We’ve designed important internal sitesand evaluated / recommended improvements to those done without us!
- 7. We’ve helped departments develop their IAsAnd implement them as Site Hierarchies and different Web Parts in SP.We’ve also helped align people with a new corporate taxonomy at the global level.
- 8. We’ve advocated for a UCD-based process for moving departments into SPActed as “SharePoint Liaisons” (consultants) and trainersCreated templates and tools to ease the migration
- 9. Evaluated and advised on “findability”Benchmark / interim measures via survey and anecdotal feedbackContributing to the IA of the largest department: DevelopmentSupporting governance efforts:Designing and documenting templates for Dept, Team & Project SitesCollaborating to ensure content types / metadata will improve searching
- 10. What challenges have we faced?Here’s a sampling of some of the things that have driven us crazy.
- 11. What challenges have we faced?Using SharePoint’s OOTB conceptual model vs. customizing to match users’ mental modelsBalancing need for governance with user exploration / freedomLimited training and support resourcesChange management and other “people stuff” (re-learning, resistance, competing priorities, underlying organizational dynamics)Helping people create and manage IA for their departmentsSite ownership and maintenanceBalancing good UCD processes with need to get departments into SP in a reasonable timeframe
- 12. What lessons have we learned?Here’s what you should know if you are about to embark on a project like this.
- 13. What lessons have we learned?Pick your battles – some things are learnable, others are not. Be involved in and fight for the big, ugly / hairy problems.Do something with standards up-front – don’t let it be a free for all to start, but don’t come across as too restrictive either.The best training is hands-on and just-in-time. Focus on making sure people understand the basics before getting fancy.Highlight the “what’s in it for me?” Overcome resistance through demonstrated value; pay attention to organizational undercurrents.People must have the vision, skills, resources, and an action plan to implement change successfully. Get and leverage executive sponsorship.
- 14. Q&A
Editor's Notes
- #4: Who can answer this question?(Likely everyone will be “right”.)Anyone see any flags here? (Too many things to too many people.)
- #5: Hopefully solving some problems.Consolidating a number of different, sometimes custom-built applications and systems (HTML pages, “Project” pages, public folders, department file shares). - People didn’t always understand which was best to use - Content is/was everywhere!Freeing up our 3 person Intranet team by providing users with an easier tool with which to maintain their pages.Hopefully findability!
- #7: UCD process on the big sites people use frequently, such as Human Resources and Systems Services (e.g. our Help Desk).
- #8: SP has a concept called a Site Hierarchy, which basically is a (tree-based)list of web sites below the one a person is currently on, which users can use to navigate. How a department lays this out is up to them (and they often have trouble figuring this out). The topmost level (i.e. tabs at the top and links immediately below – which are generally to department web sites) is being dictated by a larger project being worked on by our CEO and others.
- #9: Decided early on to go “dept by dept” with a very light process, seeing what challenges we faced, and improving as we learned more. Usability Specialists are assigned to departments to help them move in, which by nature comes with some need to help people learn the tool. Once we had some info, we created sample project plans, process with checkpoints, and word templates to help people along the various stages.
- #10: Want to be sure we’re going in the right direction, AND, it’s likely to get worse before it gets better!- Benchmark data indicates that organizational, project, and x-functional teams know where to store and find their stuff, but outsiders have a really hard time.Templates: giving people starting points for creating their sites and instructions about the impact to findability of them making changes to specific sections.Specific types of content (e.g. documents that support our development process) are tagged with specific information, such as the type of specification it is, who authored it, what department/group it belongs to, etc.), what bug or enhancement it’s associated with, etc. This info can later be used to locate documents (e.g. in a faceted search design).
- #12: Governance:Buy-in for creating and using templates across the organization.Rampant, unwarranted use of icons! Training / support: Everyone learning at the same time.IA: ranging from: How to do it on their own? (Not easily done without us – and our resources don’t scale.) Decisions about whether to have separate or blended sites for different audience’s info needs Keeping in line with larger efforts to get corporate taxonomy in order
- #14: Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting: a Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used has been a great resource.So has A Framework for Thinking About Systems Change (Knoster, Villa, and Thousand).
- #15: So, you can see there are LOTS of ways Usability can be helpful in a project like this. And we’ve pretty much done it all!Any questions before I handit over?