By Corey Vilhauer CHAPTER 10complex mixtures.”^11 He likens it to pattern recognition, but with a twist,
whereby we move past the teeming mass of conflicting interests and find
places where they can come together in harmony.
If this sounds a lot like the quagmires we wade through trying to keep
all of our website users happy, you’re not mistaken. Just like we spend
hours and hours organizing and testing and reorganizing the content on
our website to provide the fastest view to all pertinent audiences, we must
also, through trial and error, determine who will work best within an orga-
nization’s content team.
You start by bringing back your group from the initial discovery ses-
sion. One by one, go through each part of the proposed strategic plan. Ask
questions about ownership and ability. Who does this already? Who else
could do it? How many people do we have working on this project? How
many hours can we pull from other departments? Where are opportunities
for us to hand over content to a subject matter expert in order to save time
on our end?
With these questions, you can create an initial workflow plan. It can be
as simple as a Word document with everyone’s responsibilities by position,
or as complex as a spreadsheet with exact hours and tasks. Simple is better,
however. Step Two Designs, which has undertaken extensive research on
developing intranet content teams and evaluating workflow, warns against
overly complicated workflow processes. James Robertson, managing direc-
tor of Step Two Designs, writes that “simple workflow can be useful, with
one or two steps between the author and the published page... Beyond this,
however, workflow can prove to be ineffective or even problematic.”^12
We typically develop a chart that shows relative content flows, very
much like the one displayed below.
11 Frederick, Matthew; 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, http://101thingsilearned.com/Architec-
ture/101TILArchitecture.html
12 Robertson, James; “What Every Intranet Team Should Know”, http://smashed.by/step2