kate wilson. hi, i’m kate wilson – former librarian, current it nerd. (not sure how i got here...
TRANSCRIPT
Kate WilsonNetDexterityJuly 12, 2014
Taxonomy Development:Lessons from a Librarian
A bit about me…Hi, I’m Kate Wilson –
Former librarian, current IT nerd.
(Not sure how I got here from Music Librarian, but thrilled that I did!)
Graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool)
Information Management consultant for NetDexterity
What I do Information Management Consultant
Document management, records management, taxonomy, navigation, metadata, usability, design, testing…
Set people up to find what they need, when they need it! About NetDexterity
Toronto-based Microsoft Partner
Deliver Enterprise Information Management solutions, mainly on apps
The Project The Client
Public library system for a large Canadian city
About 2,000 end users across about 80 branches
Existing intranet (html) and series of shared drives
The Challenge Implement SharePoint 2013 Very tight timeline and budget
The Goal
Develop a Taxonomy A hierarchical representation of the organization’s
knowledge domain.
From the taxonomy we would develop:
Site architecture Metadata schema Navigation
Pets
Mammals Reptiles Fish
Dogs Cats Bunnies
Lizards
Snakes
Goldfish
Challenge: Produce a high-quality product within a limited amount of time.
So…where do I start?
Interviews Talk to individual users and stakeholders and learn what
content they work with, how best to organize it, and what site areas they’d like to see.
Pros Stakeholder involvement means
better buy-in to the end product
Cons
X Time consuming
X Output not hierarchical
Content Inventories Create a spreadsheet containing all of the pages in the
organization’s existing intranet and/or shared drive.
Pros Good way to assess all existing
content Hierarchical representationCons
X Doesn’t take into account new areas the organization may need
X Doesn’t really involve the client
Sketchboarding Get stakeholders and subject matter experts together and
ask them to collaborate on a potential site architecture and workflows.
Pros Collaborative, and some people really
like working on paper
Cons
X Paper is hard to share and doesn’t lend itself to easy iterations
X Once the sketchboard is complete, it has to be transcribed into another format to be useful.
Card Sorting Each business or knowledge area is written on a separate
index card. End users are recruited and asked to group ‘like’ things together into a hierarchy.
Pros Organizes content into a
hierarchy, which is the outcome we wanted
Get a sense for how users thinkCons
X Users aren’t coming up with the cards themselves – are they the right cards?
Conclusion Combine the best
elements of all methodologies into a workshop: Involve the client to gain
buy-in Collaborative and iterative Output is hierarchical Considers existing content
and future growth
My Approach
Workshop Concept A bottom-up approach to a function-oriented
taxonomy.
COLLECT ANALYZE ORGANIZE
Gather information/ content types
Identify broader themes and topics
Map themes and topics hierarchically
1 2 3
Participants The workshop would consist of:
Project Team (8)
Subject Matter
Experts (7)
Stakeholders representative of different business areas.
End users and/or content owners from each business area
(Some overlap between the two
groups)
Preparation
Two weeks before workshop: Invitations sent to Project Team and Subject
Matter Experts
Background material provided to participants Intro slide deck about what is a taxonomy, why we are creating
one, and the general outline of the workshop
Participants assigned homework Asked to think about what kinds of information they work with
and bring a list to the workshop
Preparation
How I Prepared Prior to the workshop, I
created a content inventory of their shared drives and intranet website
This information was mainly to keep in my ‘back pocket’
I like to use Xmind
Workshop(Approximately 3 hours)
Workshop
Introduction ~30 minutes
Began with quick introductions – first myself, then around the table
Next, took the participants through the introductory slides
Invite questions from participants
Workshop
Asked participants to write on sticky notes the kind of information they interact with on a day-to-day basis, then put the sticky notes on the wall.
This step was the quickest because the participants had been asked to come up with their list in advance.
Gather information/ content types
1. Collect ~30 minutes
Workshop
2. Analyze
Identify broader themes and topics
Asked participants to group related information together under subject headings, or topics/themes.
The themes generally reflected how the information was used (function)
As group came up with headings I recorded them in XMind
~45 minutes
Workshop
3. Organize
Asked participants to arrange topics and themes into hierarchical groupings.
Participants found it difficult not to place the themes into groups based on ownership – wanted to recreate their org chart.
This step done on XMind and projected from my laptop. (Easier to move sections around.)
Map themes and topics hierarchically
~60 minutes
Workshop Output
After the Workshop
Finalizing the Taxonomy Workshop provided the tools for taxonomy
development
Workshop participants met weekly for an hour to discuss and finalize taxonomy
Later, the meetings became about site structure, metadata, and navigation.
I attended each weekly meeting to provide guidance and oversight to the process
Lessons LearnedBiggest challenge
Participants intuitively seem to want to group information by content owner.
What went well
‘Back pocket’ inventory of existing intranet proved useful.
Client extremely satisfied with the result – high quality taxonomy created in weeks
Cost effective – consultant hours limited to prep work, workshop, and weekly check-ins
Lessons Learned
Success factors
Make sure that if a participant can’t make it, they send someone to fill in.
Otherwise the ‘voice’ of a user group may be missing
Bring a note-taker to capture comments and ideas from participants, and to be an extra set of hands.
Thanks to our sponsors!
Connect. Collaborate. Share.
Toronto SharePoint Users Grouphttp://www.meetup.com/TorontoSPUG/
Toronto SharePoint Business Users Grouphttp://www.meetup.com/TSPBUG/
SharePoint Saturday Torontohttp://spbuzz.it/spstoyam
SharePoint Drake and Firkin aka “The Drake” 6982 Financial Drive, Unit B101
Don’t Miss the Prizes… Xbox One with Kinect Your favorite SharePoint books Training vouchers Office 365 Swag
(tweet #ShareSelfie #spstoronto to win) Vendor gifts and raffle