- AEC Intranet Cookbook
- IAI Intranet Review Toolkit
- Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
- Intranet Design Annual 2006: Ten Best Intranets of the Year
- Intranet Roadmap
- Practical Intranet Development
- The Intranet Advantage
- Transforming your intranet
- Why Intranets Fail (and How to Fix Them)
AEC Intranet Cookbook
This is a 108 page guide to creating an effective intranet. ZweigWhite was founded by management guru Mark Zweig in 1988 with the objective of improving the management practices in design and environmental consulting firms. Today the organisation claims to be the largest, most diverse organization devoted exclusively to serving the needs of design and construction firms in the USA.
But don't be put off for one moment by the fact that this Cookbook is aimed at architecture and environmental consulting sector. The content is applicable to all sectors. The main sections are Getting Started, Intranet Content and Organisation, and Ingredients for an Effective Intranet, which sets out fifteen critical success factors that are spot on. All this alone would make the report excellent value for money, but there is a final section with twelve detailed case studies of a range of intranets, all from organisations with less than 1000 employees and some with less than 100. All the case studies are illustrated with screen shots, and with comments on what went right, and what went wrong. The AEC Intranet Cookbook retails for $145 in the USA from http://store.zweigwhite.com/p-22-aec-intranet-cookbook.aspx.
Intranet Review Toolkit
Intranet Review Toolkit http://www.intranetreviewtoolkit.com/ Free download
The purpose of the IAI Intranet Review Toolkit is to enable intranet managers to benchmark their intranet against current best practice. It has been developed by James Robertson (www.steptwo.com.au) and covers the intranet home page, site structure and navigation, search, page layout and visual design, intranet content, news, staff directory and intranet strategy and management. There are nearly 70 evaluation criteria, each of which has a rationale for why it is important, and then two statements which set out the upper and lower bounds of good practice. Summing the scores by section and overall provides a quantification of intranet performance. Space is provided for comments against each of the heuristics.
Overall this is a very commendable first version, and in principle works very well indeed.
However these are personal points, and I am certain that this Toolkit will develop rapidly as it starts to be used, and from use will come requirements for enhancements and additions. The Toolkit is available under a Creative Commons license, allowing it to be freely downloaded and used, as long as certain conditions are met. Congratulations are due to the vision of the IAI in underwriting some of the costs of the Toolkit and to James Robertson for the immense amount of experience and dedication that went in to developing the Toolkit.
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
The first edition of this book by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville was published in 1998 and in effect defined the scope and purpose of information architecture. The second edition, published in August 2002 is more than a revision, being almost twice the length of the original book at 460 pages. The main sections are Introducing Information Architecture, Basic Principles of Information Architecture, Process and Methodology, Information Architecture in Practice, Information Architecture in the Organisation, and some Case Studies, one of which is a very detailed account of the Microsoft MSWeb intranet. The authors cover both web sites and intranets, but in this second edition there is more of a bias towards intranets, including a really excellent chapter on approaching to searching web sites and intranets. The book concludes with a list of books and web resources on information architecture. This is a very practical book, and should be essential reading for any intranet manager. It is published by O'Reilly and Associates Inc. (http://www.oreilly.com/) and costs £28.50. The ISBN is 0-596-00035-9.
Intranet Design Annual 2006: Ten Best Intranets of the Year
Nielsen Norman Group Report: http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/design/
$148
This 287 page report has nearly 200 screenshots, so that's less than $1 a screen shot. On that basis alone this report is excellent value for money. Add in detailed analyses of the intranets from Allianz Australia Insurance, Altana Pharma AG, Bank of Ireland Group, Capital One, IBM, Merrill Lynch, Metro Group, O2, Staples and Vodafone Group and this year's edition of the Intranet Design Manual is as good as it's predecessors.
Each intranet description is set out in a very consistent way, but sometimes this left me wanting a bit more in some areas, and less in others. Although it makes it easy to compare the intranets, I'm not sure that that is always to the overall benefit of the reader trying to understand not just what an organisation did to it's intranet, but why it did it. Some of the issues that I am especially interested in are what the development process is for an intranet redesign, the staffing of intranet teams, and in particular where those teams report to in the organisation.
Having said that the wealth of detail is quite remarkable, and the style of writing is very polished. You feel that the research staff really quizzed the organisations and went though every page to reach their conclusions, and not just spend a quick hour or so at the task.We should not only be grateful to the Nielsen Norman Group for their work, but also to all the organisations who were willing to have their intranet put on public display. They should all get a very large certificate for corporate reception in recognition of their bravery. If you think your intranet is perfect then $148 is a small price to pay for confirmation, but I bet you will learn rather more than you bargained for about current good practice.
Intranet Roadmap
Step Two Designs http://www.steptwo.com.au/ $US120 plus $15 post and packing
There are no current books on intranet development, so this very concise handbook from James Robertson and his colleagues at Step Two Designs is very welcome indeed. The 54 page book sets out with great clarity the way in which an intranet should be set up, and will be especially useful to intranet managers in smaller companies, but in fact all intranet managers would do well to have a copy of this booklet to hand.
The main sections of the book deal with strategy, design, content, change and communications and technology. The final section deals with techniques such as card-sorting, design patterns, paper prototyping, process mapping and usability testing. For all the sections there are hyperlinks to additional content on either the Step Two Designs site, or on other web sites. The book comes with a large wall chart that summaries the steps that need to be taken, and would be very useful in project meetings and also pinned to the wall of the intranet team office.
Although this is quite a short book the amount of practical expertise contained within is very high indeed. This is clearly a book written by someone who has considerable personal experience of intranet development, and the writing style is very clear and concise.
The Intranet Advantage
This is the second (2002) edition of a handbook first published by the International Association of Business Communicators (http://www.iabc.com ) in 1996. Shel Holz is one of the leading US gurus on intranets, especially from the viewpoint of supporting the work of corporate communications departments. The list of sections will give you an indication of the scope of this 250pp loose-leaf publication.
- Intranet components
- Strategic planning for the intranet
- Preparing the intranet blueprint
- Issues and controls
- Prepare to launch(or relaunch) your intranet
- Writing for the screen
- Intranet publications
- Staff functions and their presence on the intranet
- Operational departments and their intranet presence
- Cross-functional applications of an intranet
- Multimedia on an intranet
Throughout the handbook the feeling that Shel Holz has a wealth of practical experience in a wide range of companies comes through, and his writing style is very readable. I have read the handbook through several times and there is hardly a sentence that I would disagree with. There is virtually no technology content, which is to the book's advantage. The only omission is the Intranet Focus web site from the list at the end of the book, but that will not stop me giving this book a 5 star rating. The list price for non-members is $210, but the publication can be downloaded as a pdf file for $190. I would recommend the printed version. http://store.yahoo.com/iabcstore/inad.html
Transforming your intranet
Jason Sumner (Editor), 2006. Melcrum Publishing. 124 pages $465 http://www.melcrum.com/store/products/product.shtml?id=3046
Back in 2001 Melcrum published a seminal report on intranet development that is still much quoted for its survey of intranet adoption. Five years on comes this very useful collection of papers from industry experts together with some brief but useful case studies. The sections of the report cover strategy, governance, content management, usability, technology, killer content (though how I abhor that term) and measurement. Among the companies profiled are Axa, Ernst and Young, GlaxoSmithKline, IKEA and Siemens, though not in the detail that the Nielsen Norman Group reports offer. All are large corporates, and it would have been useful to have some case studies from other categories of organisation. Nevertheless this is a very practical handbook and given how few books and reports there are on intranet management still represents value for money despite the cover price. Production values are excellent. As well as giving ideas and inspiration to an intranet team this would also be a useful Christmas present to any current or potential intranet sponsor.
Why Intranets Fail (and How to Fix Them). A practical guide for information professionals.
Luke Trednnick, 2004. Chandos Publishing. 196 pages $55. ISBN-10: 1843340682
The first section of the book looks at the ways that organisations work and the way that people react with intranets. In the opening chapter the author sets out six categories of intranet user and comments on their implicit and explicit expectations of an intranet. Why organisations behave irrationally in their expectations of intranet success and in Chapter 3 the author sets out to reconcile these competing expectations.
The second section of the book explains how to organise design and manage intranets that are both user-centric and organisation-centric. There are step-by-step guides on how to implement an intranet and how to manage an intranet. The final chapter covers the need to anticipate change.
On balance this is a very recommendable book, though in quite a number of areas the author does rather skim over issues without really getting into quite enough detail to be helpful. It is published by Chandos Publishing http://www.chandospublishing.com/ at 39GBP.