WelchmanPierpoint - Web Operations Management

New Year's Resolutions for Managing the Web

Christine Pierpoint — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 21:23:52 +0000

As we look at the dawn of 2009, it's once again time to make (and keep) our New Year's resolutions. Personally, I resolve to blog more and do my part to share WOM best practices...of course, loosing a few pounds wouldn't hurt either...

If you're a Web manager looking for ways to optimize your site in '09, here's a few resolutions to consider:

1. Out with the old - this is the online equivalent of cleaning out the closet. Basically, if your site is more than five years old, odds are you have a few dust bunnies lurking on your Web server - things like that memo that talks about Y2K protocols, or the itinerary for the 2004 annual conference, or the thirteen copies of last year's new product announcement. It's one thing to keep boxes of old documents around the office, but in the Web world, that stuff is exposed to the public. You may not be seeing it, but your audiences are. And each time they stumble across an outdated, irrelevant page you lose a little bit of credibility. Take the initiative this year to clear out the ROT. Start by conducting an inventory of your site and make some determinations of what should stay and what needs to go.

2. Do more with less - in today's economic climate, the pressure will be on for Web managers to cut costs, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to escape ongoing demand for new functions and features. This is the year to step back from the never-ending wave of one-off projects and think about the Web product holistically. What is it you're really trying to accomplish? Is the goal to launch a new Sharepoint site, or are you trying to foster collaboration across multiple silos? If so, what can you do to structure existing content so it can be easily shared? You may find it's worth more in the long run to invest in the content you've got rather than throw more technology on an already broken process.

3. Make your assets work for you - you've invested a lot in the Web over the years, but what do you really get from it? You know people visit the site, so there is some implied value there, but can you actually quantify an ROI? Take time this year to figure out what you want to accomplish via the Web and then put some tools and process in place to measure the site against those metrics. Whether it's audience satisfaction, operational efficiencies or old-fashioned revenue generation, you'll need sound analytics to measure the effectiveness of your Web initiatives. By the end of the year, you'll have a stockpile of data you can use to formulate new resolutions for 2010!

Telling the Federal Government Story of Coming Together

Kristina Podnar — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:12:20 +0000

The rotating tag line reads: “People are criss-crossing the country and the world to celebrate the holidays with friends and family. Tell us your story of coming together.” What seems rather reminiscent of a call to answer a survey in USA Today’s Travel section, is actually a call for input on President Elect Obama’s transitional Website, www.change.gov .

We have known for at least the last fifty-plus post-election days that this is a new world we live in; one that was built on a promise of change, to share information and bring about a transparent federal government. Now, so many of us are curiously looking at how that new U.S. world order will really occur. After all, what is being attempted with our government’s online presence is revolutionary (at least for government). And there is a strong sense that the White House transition will be somewhat challenge-free, but as the Washington Post pointed out yesterday, how do we leave behind the “Encyclopedia Britannica era ” that is present throughout the federal government?

Most federal Web sites and Web Programs (if they exist) are not only unprepared for Web 2.0, but still finding Web 1.0 a challenge. Many sites are static HTML, even more brochure-ware, with a postal address provided as a means of contact (when was the last time you wrote a letter?) Some have shown rapid advance in the right direction, and leveraged RSS feeds and email alerts on things that may or may not be of actual interest. But most sites are a far cry from leveraging input from citizens, let alone soliciting it.

A good start might be to simply assess where agencies are today. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if all agencies took a self-assessment and graded themselves in the arena of strategy (goals and mission of the organization and how those are translated to the Web), governance (a definition of who makes decisions about the Web, and what the ground rules are), execution (how that strategy got translated to actions such as the design, navigation, taxonomy, and content management system), and measurement (self-assessment of ability to deliver on what was set out for the Web, including a brief ROI)? Or really, on any other reasonable criteria.

Arguably, if agencies knew where they score on the continuum of President-elect Obama’s vision, they could at least make the case for what will change (and associated resources) to fall in line with the new administration's approach. They could take steps to implement an agile Web team that can address this transition to Web 2.0, and beyond. But most importantly, as citizens, we could all start to interact with our government through the channels we are used to (YouTube, Facebook, etc.), and interact within our citizen community at large. Perhaps doing so would allow more agencies next year to ask questions and receive our answers, to things that matter to citizens and businesses every day… how to secure college tuition through loans, federal support for exports to the Ukraine and China… or even a request to hear our story of coming together.

Web Governance

Lisa Welchman — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:19:18 +0000

Differentiate Stakeholders: the Squeeky Wheel Shouldn't (Always) Get the Grease

David Hobbs — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:36:25 +0000

Some of your stakeholders will be loud. Even obnoxious. If your objective is to reduce pain right now, then by all means do whatever it takes to shut them up. But I would argue that if you want to develop a strong product, then you should think carefully about who you are reacting to and who you can (tactfully) ignore.

Let me step back. This assumes that you are collecting feedback from your users and other stakeholders before implementing anything. If you aren't doing that, then the first step is to initiate an honest dialog with your users about what changes should be made to whatever system you are managing.

This could be applied to most products, but consider the implementation of a Content Management System (or ongoing product management of your Web presence) in your organization. You will have the following types of users (mostly site visitors, followed by basic CMS users and then a small set of power CMS users):

Chances are, your power users are the loudest. These are the folks who already have installed three different Open Source CMSes and develop Web sites on the side for their friends. They are very opinionated, and have just enough artillery to potentially make you look silly in large meetings (although perhaps not enough background to really understand how to go from a developed-at-home-in-an-hour implementation to an infrastructure for a large site).

In many ways, these power users are often asking for things that don't really matter, at least in the Big Picture. The people you really want to support are your External Site Visitors (or internal visitors in the case of an intranet). These are the folks that are probably even less able to clearly articulate exactly what they want, but are probably the most important. So if you are staring at a list of functionality requests, and you do manage to have an item that would benefit a regular old site visitor, then seriously consider it. This may even mean that you get yelled at by other stakeholders, but remember that your site visitors are what really matter. Here are some concrete ways that you can differentiate your stakeholders:

Make sure to get input from the different types of stakeholders you have (and make to identify the key ones)
When negotiating your next round of enhancements, potentially even have all requests categorized by the type of stakeholder that will be affected.
Whenever you decide on your next block of changes, make sure to cover each type of stakeholder (and have an especially good reason for not satisfying your largest stakeholder group, if you decide to do so).
From a measurement perspective, you could track which group of users benefits from the various changes you make.

SharePoint and Web Governance: A Fit Pair

Kristina Podnar — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:26:31 +0000

I have been thinking about Web governance and SharePoint this past week. For the first time in my career, I saw a well-managed SharePoint implementation with ample (read several hundred), well-structured sites. The implementation was easy to maintain I heard, all sites had consistent and good navigation (gauged by usability studies), and the naming convention was phenomenal as well.

For years now I have seen and heard clients indicating their SharePoint sites are out of control. The worst offender I have seen is a client with over 500 SharePoint sites. Each one contained a small population of documents, all were hard to navigate, and the majority were password protected with access granted to a lucky few employees who could plead association with the division sponsoring the site. Doesn’t sound scary yet? I didn’t mention the client is a major player in the financial sector and subject to SOX regulations.

The reality is that scenes like these are common, and not necessarily specific to SharePoint. However, technology toolsets like SharePoint can enable the worst content publishing behavior on sites, most commonly Intranets.

So it was nice to see a SharePoint instance with good Web governance around it. Sure, there could be improvements of this or that kind – but that is always the case. In this instance, there were a number of things done right to make it all work, and none more important than introducing good Web governance to SharePoint. Specifically:

Defining the ultimate goal of the SharePoint implementation and how it will support the corporate objective of internally sharing information and leveraging best practices of workplace collaboration.
Deciding who gets to make decisions about the SharePoint sites and whether they get controlled. In this instance, IT holds the key to the implementation of a site based on a written request and applies one of a series of templates based on requirements.
Creating policies and standards by a hybrid (technical-functional) team that defines navigation, naming conventions, and ROT (redundant, outdated, trivial) categories.
Ensuring compliance to the policies and standards through a top-down approach with management. While IT owns the infrastructure for SharePoint and its sites, the department only makes visible the status and compliance with the adopted policies and standards.

Not that I should be surprised, but it is nice to see theory executed, and despite all odds (it seems), have a Web governance approach well executed. Especially in the land of SharePoint.

* Writer's note: WelchmanPierpoint is a vendor neutral company specializing in Web Operations Management. While we may advise a client on a technology selection process, we do not endorse any specific product.

Lessons Learned from Cyber Monday

Christine Pierpoint — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:49:38 +0000

Today was the official kick off of the online holiday shopping season, according to, Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation. While there is much todo about the day being a bellwether for online sales, there are also clues that tell us some things about the state of Web Operations Management among e-tailers.

Given the importance put on holiday sales, it's surprising to think that any retailer would be caught off guard by the amount of traffic generated between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Yet large retailers like Victoria's Secret, Williams-Sonoma and Dell experienced performance issues according to a report from Gomez, Inc. Another news report described how Sears.com went down due to a large volume of traffic over the weekend. What did they expect? How could you announce the return of the layaway and incredible "one-day only" bargains in the midst of an economic recession and not expect a stampede of traffic to your site?

Savvy marketers should take a lesson from this. Next year, as you plan for the big online shopping season, look to your site metrics to gauge anticipated traffic based on previous years' data. You should also check out what the industry analysts have to say about the overall market. Then, talk with your IT/Web Infrastructure folks to make sure your site can take the anticipated traffic. Finally, make sure you have an ROI defined so you can measure how well your site did against anticipated traffic.

Web 2.0 Expo NYC

David Hobbs — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 17:23:15 +0000

David covered Web 2.0 Expo NYC under the aegis of The Content Wrangler , producing the following blog posts:

Leading up to the conference, David also interviewed Lisa Welchman on Web Operations Management and Web 2.0.

For more information on the conference, see the Web 2.0 Expo NYC News and Coverage page .

Why Is It So Difficult to Execute Web Tactics?

Christine Pierpoint — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:55:00 +0000

I recently gave a talk to a group about how to plan for and execute a
ROT clean up. (ROT, meaning the treatment of Redundant, Outdated, or
Trivial content). Throughout the presentation, we kept
coming back to questions along the lines of, "how do I get senior
management to buy in?" or "how do I get content owners to agree to
this?"

Whether you are initiating a ROT clean up, a site re-design or rolling out a new technology, these questions are symptoms of a larger problem - you
don't have a Web Operations Strategy or good Web Governance
in place.

The success of any Web tactic depends on how mature you are
in the areas of strategy and governance. For example, if you don't have
defined policies and standards, you are going to struggle any time you
try to execute something on the Web. The reason being, without strategy
and governance, you have no authority to make others comply. So, even
if you define ROT cleanup as a "best practice," you are still going to
find resistance within your organization because there is nothing that
says they have to comply with that initiative.

The next time you plan to launch a major Web project, it may save you, and the organization, to a lot of grief to first revisit your Web Operations Strategy and Web Governance. Having them in place will ensure that you have the formalization of authority and policies and standards to ensure the success of Execution efforts.

The First Rule of Web Governance: Do Not Harm

Kristina Podnar — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:00:11 +0000

There is a principle of "do not harm" in life. But as doctors for the Web, we all line up promising to fix the ailments that disrupt the organization and cause agony amongst all ranks, most notably perhaps with on-the-ground soldiers, the Web Team. What is often hard to comprehend is that organizations, especially those whose sites seem to be mostly in the ICU and just pages away from a code blue, are often the slowest to change and most likely to relapse. Trying to resuscitate the organizations and their Web properties, and give them a quick lifeline is a noble cause, but just like doctors, we often forget what should be our credo, and first, do no harm!

Regardless of how messed up a Web site is, or how dysfunctional the organization that has given the Web site life, we should always pause for a moment and review what is realistic and what the organization can do to heal itself. This is a tough one as change may take years, and improvement of the Web health may be measured in micro-steps, such as the simple removal of several very outdated pages or the agreement amongst Web staff that once a year they will get together and discuss Web patterns and common goals. The dream of Web governance, in its truest and romantic form, may be years away, giving way to organizational change management activities, including a change in leadership, adjustments to job descriptions, education and training for the Web staff, and convincing subject matter staff that they can either own Web content or let go of it, depending on your situation.

As tempting as it may be to rush in and develop a governance model, associate roles and responsibilities with each group, and hope that senior leadership will enforce the theoretical end state of a perfect Web governance, you should immediately stop and ask yourself whether you are doing harm in the process. Is there a more realistic and gradual approach to make a positive impact to the health of the Web within your organization? If so, consider performing these miniature health boosters that can go a long way to stabilize your Web properties. As you start to gain momentum, you may quickly find yourself ready for a bigger undertaking. But weight this gradual approach against the potential of undertaking a big operation that fails: you may only get one opportunity at Web governance and while the slow pace of change can be frustrating, it can also ensure that you do no harm and leave your organization feeling good about the small changes. Good enough to take on something bigger.

Who Cares What They're Doing: Is it Right for You?

Delia Konizeski — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:20:37 +0000

I'm all for benchmarking-- examining and comparing your organization in light of best practices, industry standards and the like. The problem is, I've seen so many organizations use benchmarking of sorts as a crutch that gets in the way of online change. The problem usually crops up during times of change, say, creating a new Web design or devising a new IA.

Time and again, I've seen an idea proposed that makes sense for the organization and its online presence. It's also clear that it meets a user need. It could be as innocuous as needing a "Calendar" link on the homepage.

And time and again, senior management reacts with "What's X doing?" That X is usually anybody the organization (1) considers an esteemed peer or (2) a to-be-emulated competitor. We can lump that in with benchmarking but it’s often “unnecessary justification.”

But at a certain point, what's it matter what other organizations are doing if what you need to do is right for your organization? That is, it meets the needs of your audience. There’s a pervasive notion that "if they don't, we can't." How does that serve to raise the bar?

When you think about it, mirroring what others are doing without doing research with your own audience is a short sighted but an often-used driver for many decisions. So, benchmark all you want. But when decision time comes, don’t let another organization’s decisions define yours.

CMS Implementation: Product or Project Manage?

David Hobbs — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:06:53 +0000

So your organization decided to get a new Content Management System (CMS), either replacing an existing CMS or as your first CMS. A strong organizational temptation will probably be to treat implementing the CMS for your institution as a project rather than as an internal product. But in addition to project management, you'll need product management. It's unfortunate that project, product, and program management all have the abbreviation of PM, and that may contribute to the confusion between these terms.

So what are a couple of ways of treating a CMS implementation from a product manager's perspective?

1. Ongoing Process. With a project view of the implementation, you will probably be managing to a milestone, whereas for a product the process needs to be looked at as an ongoing process. The product manager is responsible for the overall and ongoing success of the product.

2. Product Definition. A key responsibility of the internal CMS product manager is defining the product. This is much tougher than it sounds, since the product manager will hear a wide variety of often-conflicting requests from various stakeholders. From this mayhem of requests (most being extremely important to the requester but not so important to other stakeholders), the product manager needs to define the product.

For a CMS, this definition includes:

How much control is given to whom. Power users will want deep control of their pages, but probably one of the main reasons to have a CMS in the first place is to enforce consistency across pages. One of the greatest conflicts will be between ease of use and support for power users.
How the CMS is extended. Any extension or custom work will increase the moving parts that can break in your system (and potentially complicate upgrades in the future). In addition, adding more functionality has a high probability of also complicating the user interface. Beyond to the go/no-go decision on functionality, exactly how it is implemented will affect the usability and manageability of the CMS.
Templates. An easy way to appease people in the short term and complicate life in the long term is to start creating a separate template for each stakeholder. The product manager needs to negotiate with the stakeholders to appropriately create templates that are re-usable across as many pages / sections of the site as possible.

Much of this boils down to the product manager deciding what not to include in the CMS implementation. Since there is no way of fully implementing everything the way everyone wants, this involves a lot of discussions with a variety of stakeholders to deeply understand and respond to the most important requirements.

Next week at jboye08, I'll be giving a talk Planting a Flag vs. Engaging Users that explores how to product manage a CMS implementation.

Building an Effective Web Team

Lisa Welchman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:27:21 +0000

So, on Sunday, I'm off to Aarhus, Denmark to participate in the jboye08 conference. This is one of my favorite events of the year for a variety of reasons-- most of which have to do with the the other speakers and participants. There's always an interesting, international mix of speakers. And, the participants are derived largely from jboye's communities of practice in Denmark. So, they are educated about Web Operations Management and ask really great questions.

This year I'll be giving a pre-conference tutorial on Building an Effective Web Team. Over the years I've seen Web Teams in all shapes and sizes, from the lone Webmaster to large, dedicated Web Divisions with scores of employees. But when looking at all of these different manifestations, I've discovered that there are four key functions that must be covered in order to properly manage a Web site:

Administrative Program Management - responsible for ensuring funding, administrative support, and management for Web Program;
Product Management - responsible for designing and driving the Web presence in a consistent manner that meets the organization’s goals;
Web Infrastructure Management - responsible for maintaining the set of standards, tools and applications which support the day to day operations of the site; and,
Managed Publishing - responsible for outreach, communications, training and technical support of all Web contributors.

I'll be discussing each of these facets in depth next week in the tutorial and also sitting on an expert panel with Martin White from Intranet Focus and Nicolai Porsbo from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

Should be lots of fun!

If you can't make it all the way to Aarhus, check out or Web Team Intensive. It's a quick way to iron out the kinks in your own Web Team and you don't have to go all the way to Aarhus!

There's Data, and Then There's Using Data

David Hobbs — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:40:27 +0000

If one way of looking at Web 2.0 is that it's a Data Operating System (per Tim O'Reilly), then there are two important elements shaping up:

Accessing Data
Using the Data

Using organizations in Washington DC as an example, several organizations with a lot of useful data are tackling these issues. The World Bank, for example, has launched it's api.worldbank.org and also a tool that users can explore the data with. The Center for Global Development and Confronting Climate Change Initiatives have an API for accessing carbon emission data, online tool for visualizing carbon emissions, including widgets that can be placed on your own site.

The DC Government has an impressive catalog of data that is made available for people to create their own mashups, and also provides maps that reflect the data. Now, the DC government has launched an innovation content, offering a prize to companies or individuals that develop innovative applications using this data. One iphone app has already been developed that is a "realtime, location-aware DC alerting tool for the iPhone, which includes crime reports, building permits and more." For those of you interested in participating in the contest, the submission deadline is November 12th.

Deep or Shallow Multilingual?

David Hobbs — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:25:27 +0000

Are Web 2.0 Technologies the Mortgage-backed Securities of the Internet?

Lisa Welchman — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:31:01 +0000

Let me be clear at the beginning: I do not dislike the “Web.0s.” I am wary of them. That’s different than not liking them. I’m excited by the possibilities of the maturing Web. I want to lean into the expanding Web with Twittering, wiki-ing, cloud computing abandon, and tap dance across the Semantic Web in a beaded gown.

But, I can’t.

I used to think that my neutrality on the Web.0 matters was an indication that I’m getting old. But now, while in the cold bath of a global economic meltdown, I’m re-evaluating my wet dishrag attitude toward Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and the ever-looming nirvana of the Semantic Web. They are powerful. They scare me and just like the too-good-to-be-true mortgages we had here in the USA, the new Web.0s promise a sort of Utopian world of collaboration and sharing that seems like it too could end badly. Especially if we don’t tend to and honor the fundamentals of Web Management.

Before I go on, let me give you some more background about me, so you know a little more about where I’m coming from. I am a semantic geek. I got a degree in philosophy in college-- but not the soul wrenching existential kind of philosophy where you wonder about yourself and get depressed. That kind of philosophy is for humanities sissies.

I studied metaphysics, specifically ontology, and semantics and philosophy of language. I had a boyfriend in college not because of my enormous wit and other questionable charms but because I knew what a Turing Machine was (and had an opinion about it). And, more importantly, the work I do on the Web is all about “the bones”: infrastructure process, governance, classification and structure, clarity and precision. How do you deliver the right “stuff” to the right person, at the right time, down the delivery channel of their preference, with style and quality so organizations can make money or further their agenda or whatever they are looking to do? That’s the cool stuff to do on the Web. Thinking about Web design all day is for sissies.

Given this background you would think I’d be all over the Web.0s. And I would be, except I think some folks are getting on board a little too quickly for my taste, without first tending to the Web Fundamentals. Web 2.0 as it’s done in a lot of organizations is built on a Web infrastructure that doesn’t respect the fundamentals of Web management or relies heavily on the movement or actions of forces which are beyond an organization’s control. It seems foolhardy, unnecessary and at times reckless for folks to jump into Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 when they can’t even do Web 1.0 soundly.

We work with organizations that don’t really know what is on their Web site or are struggling to harness the actions of their internal Web development teams. Their Web sites have taken on a life of their own. The sites are OUT OF CONTROL. Hundreds of thousands or millions of pages and content objects. Thousands of applications. It’s like the site has become The Borg and it’s sucking in content and applications and assimilating them into some undefinable entity that is minimally within the organization’s control. Then, the Web Team or someone in senior leaderships turns and looks at us and says wistfully: “We want to do Web 2.0. How can we do that?”

Organizations are jumping on the social media train without stopping to understand fully the consequences of deploying those powerful technologies. And even if the consequences are understood, few are able to deploy and maintain the technologies with any sense of quality or compliance. In going ahead and moving forward anyway, they are exposing their organizations to the risks of brand degradation, lost credibility, and in some cases, legal liability. It’s one thing (maybe) for an individual to expose themselves on the Web and quite another for an organization to do so. It is irresponsible.

So, enough griping. What are the fundamentals of the Web Management? Here’s my offering, my stab at what ought to be considered some good Web Management Fundamentals. The stuff you should just do, like save regularly, have 3 months worth of expenses in an account you can access easily, living within your means, and having an age-appropriate balanced investment portfolio.

1. There should be some relationship between any piece of content or application on a Web site and a strategic organizational objective. This is true for intranets, extranets, and Internet Web sites. If it’s not helping to get some quantifiable job done, take it off the Web.

2. An organization should always know what people and what systems are controlling its Web presence, and be aware of and manage its identity in the Web cloud. Minimally, an organization must understand who is controlling and making strategic and tactical decisions for Web sites. More difficult, but equally essential, is being aware of your organizations’ place and identity and reputation in the global Web cloud. Organizations can not afford to find out via the media that their sites contain flawed information or that they are being flamed off or mis-quoted in some obscure corner of the Web by an irate customer on some blog.

3. An organization should maintain high quality standards for Web content, data and applications, and build the internal management infrastructure to deliver to that standard. The days of doing the Web on the cheap with a couple smart young Web geeks in the corner is gone. Get a real manager to run the Web Division, fund the Web program, staff your Web team properly, and product manage your Web properties.

4. Understand what you’re getting for your efforts. Organizations need to get a solid return on investment for their efforts. The return need not be monetary but it ought to be appropriate to tactics derived from the strategic organizational objective. The most effective way to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of what you are doing on the Web is to measure the efficiency of your development process and technical delivery systems, and measure the satisfaction of your customers and users. Then determine your level of success, monetary or soft based on numbers, not coolness of the final product. If it’s not hitting the target, change.

I would say if you’ve got these 4 basics well in hand then you can afford to get starry eye’d about Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. If not, don’t expose yourself to the collaboration game. You're not likely to win. The price is too high. Go back to the fundamentals.

Web Governance Success Criteria for Large Organizations

Kristina Podnar — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:48:26 +0000

Implementing Web Governance in Large Organizations

Web Governance implementation within large organizations, be they in private or public sector, is very much like building a house of cards. It requires balance in placement and timing, or otherwise it can crumble quickly leaving you with nothing but a mess and frustration.

The order of ingredients, much like the timing, is unique to each organization. It may be a long time coming for one organization, and a quick procession for another. Fundamentally, the requirements for successful are still the same. At the core, they include:

A clear governance model with a definition of who provides input and who makes decisions in the various Web areas (or as we like to call it at WelchmanPierpoint, the inputs and decisions matrix).
An involved, but not overbearing, senior leadership team, that takes responsibility for Web strategy and governance, as well as Web investments and prioritization. And yes, they have to own the outcomes, which means correcting and enforcing if required.
Clearly stated Web objectives driven by business mission and goals, and a roadmap for their incorporation into the Web program.
Reasonable opportunities and processes for input into governance decisions, and multi-channel communication stating the required behavior, policy and standards. Fundamentally, transparency is the goal, with information being freely available and directly accessible to the Web community.
A dose of maturity for the major processes involved. No matter how much you may want this, if the organization is not ready for it, it is not ready. Education and open conversation around the need (coupled with time – see #6) may be the only solution.
Time to understand and adapt (also termed organizational change management) to the notion of Web governance and how it works within the organization.

The above list is by no means comprehensive, but is one that applies to the majority of large organizations I have been lucky enough to support in their Web governance efforts.

In future posts, I will discuss the importance of Web governance evangelism, the role of the Web Operations Program Office (or whatever you want to call you Web Operations hub) and the governance champion, as their role in successful Web governance should not be underestimated. Their impact, however, is not limited to large organizations, so more on that another time.

You Are Here: The Political Layer

David Hobbs — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:04:49 +0000

One of my favorite t-shirts is a geeky play on the seven OSI layers of networking. This shirt basically emphasizes that sure there are all these technical aspects that many of us are supposed to be working on (and perhaps learned about in college), but we all spend a lot of our time on political and other people-based layers (see also Layer 8). Regardless of what your job is nominally, there is always the political layer you have to deal with.

Web Operations Management attempts to put a structure in place for running your Web presence, which navigates the political realities of your organization. Instead of pretending these realities don't exist, you can explicitly define the Strategy, Governance, and Execution that such that it fits within your political environment. By setting these structures in place, this can also mean that you get political cover from higher up rather than being tossed about in the wind by the loudest voices asking for changes to your site (for instance, you could potentially appeal to a higher-level governance body about why you cannot make a requested change).

A Call for Quality Web Products

Christine Pierpoint — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:51:21 +0000

Perhaps after many years of referring to the World Wide Web as simply, "the Web", we've forgotten the principle that what gets published to the Web can be seen by anyone, at any time, anywhere. It doesn't matter that the content isn't featured on your homepage - if it's on the Web, it can be searched and retrieved. Yet people still don't invest the time to make sure the quality of their site lives up to brand expectations.

I've worked with many organizations that have documented rules and policies about who has to sign off on a press release, or who has permission to send out a broadcast e-mail, or print a brochure, but not a single policy in place about who has rights to publish to the Web let alone standards governing content quality. As a result, the site becomes a dumping ground of useless information, or worse, information that is just plain wrong.

Web quality may not rank as a priority among managers, but to ignore it puts your organization at risk. Consider a recent situation in which United Airlines saw its stocks drop dramatically due to the rapid spread of a Google News story citing UA's bankruptcy filings. The problem is, that story was originally published in 2002!

How did this happen? Easy, a Tribune Web site re-published the article without any reference to the original date. The old article was aggregated by Google and the rest is history. In this instance, United Airlines was the victim of someone else's sloppy tagging, but there are countless other situations where organizations have put themselves at risk, simply because there is no one minding the Web.

It's time for management to wake up and realize that your Web presence is a product. Unless you have the proper controls in place, you're exposing a poor quality product to the world.

How to Sink a Charter in Three Steps or Less

Kristina Podnar — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:49:58 +0000

So your boss involved you in that Web Operations Management thing and told you to pull together a charter for the, fill in the blank… Web Policy Council, Standards Team, Working Group, etc. As any resourceful individual whose company does not have a usable Intranet, you turn to Google and save the day when you realize NASA (or some other organized entity willing to share knowledge) has a great template you can repurpose. “If it works for NASA, it will work for me” you think. After all, they do rocket science!

And there starts the downward spiral to sinking a charter. Taking a charter that works for one organization and apply it to another with a few small changes does not allow you to address the unique challenges facing your organization. But if that isn’t enough, you might reference some other common mistakes that cause a charter to fail in its fundamental mission.

#1. Writing a charter with no teeth. Meaning, write about all of the good things you will accomplish, but leave out how the hard decisions will get made, how you will curb bad behavior, or how you will deal with difficult people. This makes your process messy and guarantees doom, if not for the overall initiative, then at least for the charter.

#2. Keeping the mystery alive. Just like a 200-page murder story or a soft cover romance novel, your charter can use a good dose of mystery. So make the charter long, keep the details hidden, and the mystery alive!

#3. Forgetting the commitment. By all means, write the charter, and don’t ask for those adopting the charter to commit and sign it.

But don’t despair! Just as you now know some common ways to sink a charter, you can also avoid those icebergs and look to make your effort a success.

Back to Fundamentals

Lisa Welchman — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:52:43 +0000

Fundamentally, what we do for our clients is not particularly complicated. When someone in my family asks me what I do for a living, I say: We help organizations apply traditional, tried and true business practices to Web site management. At the end of the business day, organizations are trying to sell, inform, educate, influence-- you name it. The fundamental objectives are the same as they have always been. And fundamental rules of engagement still apply.

If you detach strategy from execution, your (Web) product will miss the mark
If you don't know who's in charge of governing (Web) product development, then different offices and divisions will create development redundancy and waste time and resources arguing about who's supposed to be setting the agenda for the Web.
If you produce a low quality (Web) product, you will put your organization's bottom line at risk. Whether that bottom line is fiscally tangible or something else like organizational credibility.
If you don't measure the quality of your products, your customers' satisfaction with your products, and the return on investment for product development, you are likely to spend too much and gain too little.

What we do: "Web Operations Management"-- is just a fancy way of saying "sound operational practices." Any business artifact ought to be conceived, managed, developed and measured with an eye towards quality and effectiveness. Take away Web 2.0. Take away earning billions with e-commerce. Take away the information super highway. How about: on the mark strategically, governed properly, quality execution and well-measured. The rest of the stuff, like Web 2.0 and 3.0 will fall in where it ought to and when it ought to.

So, for those out there who are still flying by the seat of their pants when it comes to Web site management and running for the next, coolest Web trick, wake up, look at the current outcomes in the global economy and learn something. While I won't pretend that a poorly managed, short-sighted Web site management will bring down the global economy, it could bring down your business.