Top Ten Signs You May Have Poor Web Governance
A former colleague, the newly named Web Program Manager at her organization, called me this morning and asked me to tell her about Web Governance. I realized that I usually talk about what good Web Governance is, and how to achieve it. So, in a bit of an inverse, here are some indicators you may have poor Web Governance.
- You have little or no budget to keep your Web site up and running. And yet you are expected to keep your Web site up and running. Well.
- The organization performs ad-hoc changes to the site (example: make a brand new online campaign go live on Friday, and it is Thursday afternoon).
- Your Web team is angry, frustrated, or obliviously happy.
- The person who screams the loudest in the organization, or the one who can get the upper manager’s ear, gets their Web fill in the blank (example: budget, staff, etc.) approved. And you are thinking you should learn to scream louder.
- Five months ago there was a mandate for the Web Team to implement a site redesign, but it seems you are the only one working on it.
- Your boss asks you how many Web sites your organization has and you can’t quite remember the exact number (you lost track after 50).
- You new boss asks you what the Web budget for 2009 should be, and you ponder whether $5 million is too high and yet $200,000 seems rather low.
- There is one or more fill in the blank (example: pink, purple, spinning, flashing) content items on your site, and it is not intentional.
- There is no authoritative way to remove fill in the blank (example: pink, purple, spinning, flashing) content from your site.
- The last time you purposefully removed content from your site, the first President Bush was in office.
I will continue to grow my list. Do you have additional indications you would like to add to the list? Post a comment to let me know. Have a desire to fix your Web Governance challenges? Feel free to contact us.
More in:
Printer-friendly version
We've been thinking about Web governance for a long time. Look
in the thought archive for articles, webinars and presentations.
Blog Categories
Recent Comments
Related Posts
-
15 weeks 1 day ago
-
22 weeks 1 day ago
-
34 weeks 3 days ago
Comments
How about - you've just received an announcement that a department launched yet another site about topic X even though your organization already has a dozen sites dedicated to the exact same topic.
That is a good one!
IT and Communications can't be in the same room.
This list hit home. Its interesting how little thought is given into governance and efforts just on making a 'cool' website. In large organizations, its imperative that web governance be addressed.
Mike
True - although I believe there is change in the air. We're finding that as more and more organizations realize the significant impact the Web has on bottom-line objectives, there is more focus on putting good management practices in place.
Take Twitter for instance. On the one hand it's great for word-of-mouth, but on the other hand, senior managers are realizing that suddenly every employee has the ability to be a 'spokesperson' for the company - so how do you govern that activity?
As new and inventive Web tactics come about, smart managers will quickly realize that true competitive advantage is about managing the Web as a strategic extension of your brand and not just deploying cool technology.
You're asked to ignore the user research and do things the way they've always been done.
Post new comment