Intranet resources – the eternal vicious circle

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.

Minimise your project failures by using FMEAs

I am now working as an information architect getting involved in all sorts of web and intranet projects and the question I recently asked myself was ‘If I only had one tool or approach that I could use in such projects what might that be?’ Without any hesitation the answer would be FMEA.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is an approach that is aimed at reducing project risk and it is simple, intuitive, collaborative and team based. It has been used extensively in the defence and automotive industries for many decades and I have seen the approach prove itself time after time. So what is it and how can it be applied to web and intranet projects?

It is about getting the right people together at the right time and asking the right question. The right people are those who are going to be involved directly in the project and who have relevant experience and knowledge. The right time is before the project has kicked off and when sufficient hard information is available to enable the team to make informed judgments during the compliation of the FMEA . The right question – ‘What could possibly go wrong?’.