December 18, 2011

I am in the process of writing a book about the Lean Intranet © approach and its associated tools and techniques. The book will be called-
Lean Intranets
with the strapline
How lean thinking can improve communication in your organisation.
The book will be made freely available as a PDF.
If you have suggestions for the book I’d could grateful if you post a comment.
This will mean that posts will be few and far between while the book is being written. I envisage it should take some months….
….in the meantime have a good Christmas and a peaceful New Year
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November 6, 2011
Intranets don’t work. Why? Because not enough resources are given to them to ensure they have a chance of success. Why aren’t resources made available? Because intranets don’t work. A vicious circle is born.
In this post I’m attempting to provide an approach that may help intranet teams to make the case for better resources and to break out of this vicious circle for good.
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Posted in intranets, Projects | 6 Comments »
Tags: intranet improvement, intranet improvements, intranet planning, intranet plans, intranet projects, intranet resources, intranets, kaizen, mania
August 5, 2011
In this fifth and final post on Designing Intranet Structures I’ll be looking at what should happen once you have agreed the structure of your new or re-designed intranet with your users and stakeholders – mapping and continuously improving your intranet.
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Posted in Design, information architecture, intranets, Tools and Techniques | 1 Comment »
Tags: Design, improving intranets, information architecture, intranet design, intranet improvements, intranet maps, intranet stakeholders, intranet structure, intranet users, intranets, mania
July 31, 2011
In Part 3 I discussed how the design of URLs can play a big part in forming the initial structure of your new or re-designed intranet. In this post I’ll explain how users and stakeholders can contribute to defining the structure, why iteration is the key to a good intranet structure, why content is important and why thinking of the future is important.
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Posted in content strategy, Design, information architecture, intranets, Knowledge, Tools and Techniques, URLs | Comments Off
Tags: content, defining design, defining intranets, Design, design of URLs, information architecture, intranet design, intranet maps, intranet stakeholders, intranet structure, intranet users, intranets, mania, url design, URLs
June 19, 2011
In all of the posts and articles I’ve read about intranets I’ve never heard much mention of URL design yet this can be a key approach in designing your intranet and will also permanently help your users in finding the content they need. If you’re worried that this might sound a little complicated don’t be. The approach I’m proposing in this post is simple and low tech.
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Posted in Design, information architecture, intranets, Tools and Techniques, URLs | 4 Comments »
Tags: Design, design of URLs, intranet design, intranet maps, intranet structure, intranets, mania, url design, URLs
May 15, 2011
This post details the first step towards designing or re-designing your intranet – the system map. This map will define your intranet domains and give the first overall view of the domains that make up your intranet and the things that go in them.
Before any system map can be compiled it is important that in depth user and stakeholder research is carried out as well as a content inventory (see Content Value Analysis). The analysis of these activities will contribute towards populating the system map.
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Posted in Design, information architecture, intranets, Tools and Techniques | 3 Comments »
Tags: Design, intranet design, intranet maps, intranet structure, intranet system maps, intranets, mania
January 16, 2011
A good friend of mine recently asked me to present some ideas to the charity he works for who will shortly be re-designing their intranet. As they were still considering their options I reviewed the Lean Intranet presentation I was going to give and realised that there was a crucial question missing.
What is your intranet for?
This eventually became the central proposition of the presentation. Defining what your intranet is for is a necessary consideration before any progress can be made in attaining the Lean Intranet or any type of intranet improvement. Not defining what your intranet is for is, in fact, the greatest of the intranet wastes.
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Posted in intranets, Tools and Techniques | 3 Comments »
Tags: intranet management, intranet mission statements, intranet strategy, intranets, mania
November 21, 2010
I gave a presentation on the Lean Intranet some weeks ago to an informal meet up of Content Strategists and Intranet people. In the presentation I was quite passionate about my position regarding intranet workers. I stated categorically that they should come out of the shadow of the internet and start creating their own tools and approaches – their own profession. At the end of the presentation I was asked a question by an astute member of the audience.
‘You say you want us to create our own profession but what exactly are the differences between intranets and internets?’
To my shame I waffled and gave what might have been to many an acceptable answer but it was not acceptable to me. Afterwards I realized that I needed to give this question some more thought and the result is this post.
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Posted in intranets | 8 Comments »
Tags: difference internet intranet sites, intranet goals, intranet users, intranets, Knowledge, mania
October 3, 2010
Recently speaking at Janus Boye’s ‘Intranets at Work’ conference I introduced the concept of the intranet life cycle and intranet ‘boom and bust’.
I have been thinking about this concept for many years, ever since I carried out some initial use research for a local government intranet I was trying to get off the ground.
I was doing some contextual research with staff, sitting down with people at their desks and asking what they did, trying to establish their information needs and wants. I started talking to one guy and gave him the prepared spiel about what the project was and what we were trying to achieve when a knowing smile grew on his face. He’d been with the organization for over fifteen years and he had seen it all before. He co-operated fully and gave me some great data but the way he wished me luck at the end of the interview made me feel like I was going to need it. I asked him why.
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Posted in intranets | 21 Comments »
Tags: content, intranet life cycle, intranet lifecycle, intranets, lean, lean intranet, lean intranets, mania, usability