The rise of the corporate portal has
transformed corporate intranets into knowledge engines that help
busy employees deliver the right information to the right people
at precisely the right time.
Managing a company’s knowledge requires a very different
set of skills than what is typically found in a web team. First
and foremost when making the transition from project-oriented production
houses to trusted knowledge brokers, web teams must learn to become
obsessed with their own customers – those employees that
have the knowledge to help a company prosper in an increasingly
competitive global marketplace.
Measuring impact and value as well as proving return on investment
is critical for KM programs. However, it is very challenging. Sometimes,
all a company needs is some new ideas, strategies, and examples
to help you with this challenge.
OUR TAXONOMY STRATEGIES
Taxonomy Strategies provides specialized consulting services to help organizations
arrange their information for its most effective use. Our services include:
Taxonomy Workshops
Taxonomy, Topic map, Ontology, Controlled vocabulary, Classification,
Categorization, Conceptual indexing, Semantic web, ... There is
a lot of mumbo-jumbo being thrown around out there. We offer taxonomy
workshops to help a group of people understand this topic, and
focus on the things they need to know and have in order to satisfy
a business need. Workshops are tailored to the needs of each client.
They can range from a briefing or lecture to a multi-day project
definition exercise. Despite the differences in length and detail,
we always emphasize that taxonomies are just tools which are deployed
in order to meet some larger purpose. We concentrate on the who,
what, where, when, how, and why of taxonomies and metadata.
Project Definition
Many articles in the trade press discuss the importance of taxonomies
for organizing information. Unfortunately, very few of them discuss
all the practical aspects that must be addressed if a taxonomy
project is to provide the desired benefits. One way to think about
this at the start of a taxonomy project is to fast forward into
the future, and assume that the completed taxonomy has just been
delivered on a CD. So what? By itself, a taxonomy is just an intellectual
exercise. To make a difference, taxonomies must be integrated with
software systems and with work processes. That integration requires
answers to questions like:
- Who will tag the data with the codes from the taxonomy, how will they do it, and how long will it take them to do so?
- Once the data has been tagged, what software and business process changes will be needed to take advantage of the new metadata?
- Who will maintain the taxonomy and how will they do it?
- When the taxonomy is changed, does the old data need to be revisited? If so, who will do it and what will they need to do?
- What will all of this cost, and will it be justified by the benefits?
While all of our customers recognize the value of taxonomies for systematically
organizing their information, very few recognize in advance the changes that
will be needed for a taxonomy to make a meaningful difference in their operations.
Our Project Definition services help clients determine whether a taxonomy implementation
is justified. We work with clients to clearly define the benefits they wish
to achieve, the kinds of metadata, taxonomies, software, and work processes
that will be needed to achieve them, and the cost/benefit tradeoffs. Typical
deliverables are requirements and specifications for metadata elements, software
capabilities, user interfaces, and work processes.
Taxonomy Construction
The core service we perform is constructing taxonomies with our
clients. Our method begins with understanding the business problem
to be solved with the taxonomy, and designing a metadata specification
which defines the information that must be collected to solve the
problem.
When creating a taxonomy, our preference is not to cover rooms with little
sticky notes and string. To the greatest extent possible, we recommend using
existing taxonomies from relevant areas, with only as much customization or
new vocabulary development as needed. Another key aspect of our approach is
to consider how the taxonomy will be maintained over time, and to put that
system in place early. That way, the evolution of the alpha, beta, and production
taxonomies can be handled in a systematic way, and the staff that will maintain
the taxonomy get on-the-job experience right away.
User Training
People have an innate tendency to classify things. However, we do not naturally
classify things the same way. An important aspect of a taxonomy project is
training the staff on how they should classify things with the new taxonomy,
so that the results are as uniform as possible. More in-depth training is needed
for the staff who must maintain the taxonomies.
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