Intranet Management Software Blog

Having involved with many projects in various scales, I can see that in general there are 3 types of projects:

1.  A project with no vision

A project with no vision is a bit like life without a purpose. The project exists for the sake of having the project itself. It is almost destined to be doomed even with enough resources to make it happen. There are too many IT projects failures, many of which are due to this problem. Of course no one wants to admit there is no vision, of course they can pretend they have a vision or basically borrow one from someone else - but normally they are just too abstract and meaningless.

2.    Project with vision but no execution

Good, now we are one step closer. We have clear vision for the project but the problem is we don’t know how to execute it. Having a vision without plan and execution is just like having a good idea with no outcomes.
We know how hard it is to execute good idea, and a good idea remains just a good idea until it has been executed.

3. Project with vision and execution

Right, I think we nailed it this time; we’ve got the clear vision and know exactly what needs to be done to execute it.  As we all know having a clear plan and the right resources to execute it is a great recipe to a successful project.

At the end of the day the outcome of successful project heavily depends on execution and control.  We all know things aren’t work according to the plan. Determination, passion and continuous control is perhaps worth more than the vision itself in the real world. The Japanese called this “Kaizen” (Continuous Improvement).

Services development vision, internal customer communications, intranet project manager

Mike shared an interesting comment with me today. He was asked the question “how do I change my intranet notifications settings to avoid pop-ups?”

His response was effectively to try to determine  “what kind of user are you?”

By which he just meant, there are several answers to this, and I need to know what you actually mean by the question, and your own experience and training, to give you the most appropriate answer. Such a simple question but in fact in Claromentis there are several completely different ways to do this:

1. As a normal user, I can just go to “My settings” and select ‘email’ rather than     pop  ups, from now on Claromentis will send all of my notifications to email.
2. As an intranet interface designer, I can just create a child interface that I can allocate to whichever users I wish – by group, role, individuals or any combination – so they can never change their notifications settings from anything else but emails in the first place.
3. As a server administrator, I can change a config file setting from a pop up to a floating DIV within the page :

   $cfg_allow_background_IM_check = 2;

For anyone interested this is explained on our Intranet WIKI

This is of course such a simple question about a very small piece of intranet functionality. Imagine the range of answers to a question like “How can I effectively distribute HR information to multiple offices where policies are different..”

Home, Services ease of use

We all know interfaces can be challenging, I thought I would start a collection of examples where the best of intentions just goes horribly wrong.
So as my first post on this theme, here is me trying to cancel a squash court - what a daft pop up :

So I am trying to cancel, and it seems I have a choice of canceling or confirming. Should I ok the  cancellation or confirm that I want to cancel..? Or cancel my cancellation?
If simple things can go this wrong, what hope complex collaboration interfaces…

Services visual interfaces

Background

I’ve been asked to create a blog to share our experience managing priorities in an intranet development roadmap.  Like any other software development we’re swamped with enhancement request raised by our clients, international partners well as internally.

Managing requests

By the time this blog is written I have to deal with 500 active requests which need reviewing, examining, clarification, discussion, prioritising, and the most important thing “execution”, in an extremely limited time.

Say if I am incredibly productive and I only have to spend 10 minutes for each tickets, it would take me more than 10 days just to reviewing this tickets without any further action such as examining or writing clarification request.

Dealing with priorities

Perhaps it would take a month before an execution of these tickets can be performed.
There are many technique you can use to help dealing with priorities, one of the most popular one is by calculating the “degree of importance”, where you have to weigh each request by creating a score card. Each card is measured from different aspect such as:

•    Number of clients who has requesting such feature
•    Development time & cost to develop
•    Impact on existing system
•    Potential future sales benefits
•    Current trend & Market analysis
•    Available budget and resources

The Dilemma

Before you know it, we might have to spend more time developing a robust system rather than dealing with the request itself. Sure if you are a large organisation you might have resources to deal or an existing system to deal with this dilemma.

If you are in a small organisation this may sounds like an impossible task. Statistically I might only have less than 5 seconds to deal with each ticket and use the precious time to actually “do-something”.

Blink

A book published by Malcolm Gladwell In 2005 “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” describes the popular idea of  “thin-slicing”: ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones.

It may sounds bizarre and obviously the management won’t like this approach, but sometime in real life, if you are experienced enough you will develop strong intuition. Time is limited and you’ve got to do the “right thing” with all the limitation around you.

Claromentis Development Schedule

Reflecting this back with Claromentis development schedule, we have managed to produce what we called “Rapid development” when developing an intranet software. This means new features are efficiently developed, tested, user-tested, and deployed to the client faster than before at equal or better quality at the same time we’ve managed to implement strict budget control with limited time & resources in current economic downturn.

The idea is simple, quick and accurate decision, spend it efficiently where it should be.

Services development vision, internal customer communications, intranet roadmap

It is always great when clients appreciate your work - but even more so when they send you a crate of Beer Lao to let you know!

Today Albany surprised us with exactly that to acknowledge the hard work the support team have put in recently for them, so thanks to Howard and the IT team at Albany, and here’s Julian about to consume the first one..

Cheers Albany!

Just don’t ask him for anything too technical later today!

Services client appreciation, support

We make Claromentis Intranet Software available on a range of devices, according to our customers needs. However the truth is I have often wondered just how practical this is.

Then recently I found myself in the car park of a potential new client, having completely forgotten the names if the main contacts I was meeting with. We had arranged the meeting in somewhat of a rush and over the phone, so emails didn’t help me.

Within a few minutes I had logged onto our intranet on my i-phone, found the opportunity in Claromentis Sales Manager – and had everything I needed.

Sometimes it really is useful to have your intranet accessible from any modern device!

Services accessibility, intranet software

We are really sure now that we are making the whole process of selecting a design for  a new Claromentis Intranet just too difficult for the typical company that joins us. For a certain type of company, with the relevant skills and indeed ambitions the existing process is fine – but not for many!

Precisely because Claromentis can easily be given a design that can be completely bespoke – exactly what you would like it to be – we have  encouraged clients to think hard about what they would like the design to be.

But actually it seems that most new companies would prefer that we just tell them!

So we going now through an exciting process to develop questionnaires and models that will allow us to present the new intranet customer with a great design at the first pass – and then just let them comment on it and make minor changes.

What are the positives :

1.    The client gets an intranet with a great and relevant design, fit for purpose, in very little time.

2.    We know from experience most customers refresh their designs in year two or three anyway, after the experience of actually using it.

3.    The client can focus on content, functionality, training and deployment issues – which is probably the best use of their time.

The truth is that we now know this is the best for all concerned – but we still find it difficult to move away from a completely bespoke and individual design for each client – because that is such a strength of Claromentis.

I am reminded of the fact that in previous engagements with intranet clients over the years we should say that certain clients just did things “because we can” – perhaps this is seeing our own process in exactly the same way. Just because we can deploy a completely individual intranet design for every customer does not actually mean that we should!

Services Design, intranet software

We have talked a lot about the fact that there are so many ways to do things in Claromentis that sometimes new clients can get confused. What kind of format should this information be in? A document or a page? Should my intranet home page list of job vacancies be a small bespoke addition, an e-forms solution or a smart object looking at dynamic data on a forum?

Intranet choice

We are learning a lot about how to approach new clients – the truth is that in certain situations it is better just to implement what we think is best – rather than distract the project team with discussions about choosing between approaches that they really don’t yet understand – after all they are not yet a client. We would spend too long training them on each approach just so they can then chose one - it is better they stay focussed on the project objectives and let us just implement the most appropriate solution based on our extensive experience.

After all they can always change it later, or on a refresh project – by that time they will really understand how the relevant applications work, and can make a much more informed decision.

This paralysis through being presented with a choice is actually the most pronounced when we are at the design stage – so not the details of how to provide the functionality at all yet - but going through a mock up process on how the intranet home page should be designed to match objectives for the project as well as reinforce the company culture through branding and embracing intranet 2.0, for example.

There are important principles at stake here. One of the most relevant is the sense of ownership that a new client gets from being involved with the process, rather than just being presented with the answer. Participating in the creative process has significant implications for the sustained interest levels from the client project team – and this is fundamental for the longevity and ROI of the project.

So it seems we are in a dilemma. We often know the answer, but we should not tell them because they will then lose the sense of ownership that is fundamental for the ongoing project success.

Services choice, intranet

We are very often asked for advice at the beginning of projects on the ‘best way’ to set up intranet menu systems, document folders and the general framework of information including permissioned access.

In short - how to set up information so it is easy to navigate and has the right level of detail in the right format.

Of course if we are providing in depth services as part of our engagement with a new client, then we use a workshop approach with the project team to find agreement on the most suitable site architecture and user experiences.

But if the client has not formally requested our help with professional services, then simple advice can still go a long way to get an appropriate framework in place.

Firstly think if the CMS menu as the way to put the more detailed information found in the documents in context. They will also be pages from which related information can quickly be accessed, and where e-forms using process manager can be launched. Imagine that HR has a page about Policies and Procedures – that might summarise in just a paragraph why they are important, and have a statement like to review our expense claim policies for your department, please “click here”.

The link on the page will go to the correct document folder, where the user can automatically see the detailed policies for the department the user actually reports to.

The same page will have a link to actually make an expense claim, using the relevant e-forms process.

Once this simple concept is in place, we just need to create starting top level menus, these can be initial top levels for both the documents and menu system.

To do this just list the main informational areas involved. These are normally a combination of departments, projects, work streams and office locations – of course varying by company but in essence often similar.

Then group these as much as possible, so we get as few items as possible at the top level. Both menu systems and document folders can have as many sub folders as you need, all reacting to permission of each user – we just need an intuitive high level grouping to start the system off.

Naturally once the start is in place, both the document store and the menu systems can expand and diverge from each other as needs dictate. But by following this simple advice :

•    Users that naturally browse are always just a couple of clicks from the right information in a relevant level of detail
•    A permission structure can easily be set up to reflect the structure – for example a group for every department
•    Using inherit permissions from above will allow robust and scaleable expansion without being prone to errors

Services intranet consultancy, navigation

It’s official, Claromentis has joined the twitter gang.

You can now receive Tweets about Claromentis Blogs! Yippee!!

Services twitter