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Earley & Associates, Inc. | Classification: PUBLIC USE

Copyright © 2011 Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SharePoint IA: What You Need to

Know to be Successful

December 15, 2011

Seth Earley, Earley & Associates

Chris Kolodziejski, MetaVis Technologies

2


Agenda

• Housekeeping

• Seth Earley: Challenge of Developing Information Architectures in

SharePoint – What You Need to Know

• Chris Kolodziejski: How Tools Like MetaVis Architect Can Help

• Conclusions & Questions

3


Housekeeping

• Webinar will last 60 minutes

• You may submit questions to the speakers via the Question box on your screen.

• Need help? You can email [email protected]

• Tweet about this webinar with hashtag #sharepoint #informationarchitecture

• Follow us on Twitter at @earleytaxonomy

• Fill out the survey that should be in your inbox Let us know what topics you are interested in,

and how we can improve the series.

mailto:[email protected]

4


Founded - 1994 Headquarters - Boston, MA

What we do – Design and deliver content management and search solutions for

companies and their customers

Our core team – 35 information and system architects, library scientists, process

improvement consultants, project managers and other information management

specialists

Our unique offering – Content Choreography™

Retail

High Tech & Manufacturing

Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences

Financial Services & Insurance

Media & Entertainment

Our clients include –

Global 2000, major non-

profits and government

entities

Earley & Associates Overview

5


clients

Partial Client List

http://www.merck.com/

http://www.shire.com/shireplc/

https://www.harvardpilgrim.org/portal/page?_pageid=1391,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL

http://www.aetna.com/

http://www.ibm.com/us/en/

http://www.gartner.com/

http://www.raytheon.com/

http://www.gecapital.com/en/index.html

http://www5.jcpenney.com/jcp/default.aspx?mscssid=6a74d2e2e55cb46aea7aba321ea969326xMnVNoVzaGoxMnVNoVzaGW200B68A4060175C94EB3B45B063D4B34871E1015217

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/rdDefault.asp?

http://corporate.americangreetings.com/

http://www.huawei.com/

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/index.html

6


Events and Communities

Communities of Practice

• SharePoint IA Group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SharePointIACoP/

• Taxonomy Group: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP

• Search Group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP

Upcoming Webinar Events

• January 11, 2011 - Optimizing Business Value with SharePoint 2010

• More to be posted soon!

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SharePointIACoP/

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxoCoP

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SearchCoP

7


Training Opportunities

• SharePoint Information Architecture (3 days)

Houston, TX – January 18-20, 2012

Washington, DC – February 8-10, 2012

Chicago, IL – March14-15, 2012

Los Angeles, CA – April 11-13, 2012

Learn more and register: http://www.earley.com/training/sharepoint-information-

architecture

http://www.earley.com/training/sharepoint-information-architecture





8


SharePoint Information Architecture 3 Day Hands-on Course

• The Information Architecture Process

User Research & Requirements Gathering

Audience and Process Analysis

Roles, Responsibilities, Use cases, Personas and scenario development

Content Modeling and Content Type Definitions

Metadata Schemas and Taxonomy Development

Search Integration

• Term Store Management

Creating and Managing Groups

• Creating and Managing Content Types

Properties (Site Columns, Workflow, IM Policies)

Overview of Content Hubs

Adding Content Types to Document Libraries

• Creating Metadata for Content Enrichment

Core Metadata Schemas

Leveraging Managed Metadata and the Term Store

• Governance

Governance planning

Operationalizing governance using platform capability

9


Today’s speakers

Seth Earley Chief Executive Officer

Earley & Associates

Chris Kolodziejski Product Manager

MetaVis Technologies



SharePoint IA – What You Need

to Know

Seth Earley

11


Agenda

• Overview of "information architecture" concepts and their importance to SharePoint

projects

• Challenges for SharePoint IA

• What skills and tools are needed to be successful

• Available training for developing information architecture skills

12


Information Architecture Design Methodology

Content

Analysis

Audience

Analysis

Requirements

Definition

Requirements

& Analysis

Findings

RE

SE

AR

CH

& D

ISC

OV

ER

Content Types

& Site Column

Design

Term Store

& Taxonomy

Development

Site Maps

& Wireframe

Design

Use Cases,

Workflow &

Authoring

Solution

Design

Documents

DE

SIG

N

& D

EV

EL

OP

Taxonomy User

Interface

Tagging

Processes

Auto

Categorization

Test Plan

& Execution

TE

ST

& V

AL

IDA

TE

Governance

Strategy

& Guidelines

Socialization

Communication

& Adoption

Migration

Strategy

& Approach

Metrics

Development

Governance /

Maintenance

Processes

MA

INT

AIN

& E

NH

AN

CE

Current State

Assessment

Future

State Vision

Gap

Analysis

Heuristic

Evaluation

Strategy,

Roadmap &

Recommendations

ST

RA

TE

GY

& V

ISIO

NN

Task

Analysis

13


The IA Process

• This is a conceptual representation of the IA approach roughly broken into five work streams:

Strategy and Vision

Research and Discovery

Design and Development

Testing and Validation

Maintenance and Enhancement

• These are not necessarily discrete sets of activities, there is overlap

• Each document icon (last column) represents a deliverable which summarizes activities in that work stream. These may be combined into a single document.

• Chevrons represent tasks and activities. Not all need to be addressed or they may be addressed as parts of other tasks.

• Steps are not necessarily sequential. For example, Governance and Socialization happen at all levels

• Some deliverables are required as inputs for other processes. For example, Use Cases and User Scenarios are required for testing

14


Translating Concepts into Design Elements

• Challenge lies in going from an abstraction to something concrete.

• Many organizations are trying to “make the information easier to use” which is a

broad ambiguous abstraction

• Need to answer:

What information?

For whom?

Accomplishing what task?

With what information?

• Many information management projects fail because they are too broad, scope is

ambiguous, and outcome is not measurable.

• SharePoint IA needs to start with a focus on problems and processes

• May be broadened from this starting point, but cannot solve ambiguous problems

15


Problems => Solutions

• Problems are identified through interviews, surveys, working sessions

• In each forum, we are making observations about the current state: how people accomplish tasks, bottlenecks in processes, problems with information access and findability, challenges around inaccurate and incomplete information

• Need to translate observations about the information environment into a vision of how those issues can be resolved.

• Steps to the process:

Observe and gather data points (“what are the specific problems and challenges?”)

Summarize into themes (requires finding common elements, classifying problems according to overarching themes)

Translate themes into conceptual solutions (wouldn’t it be great if…?)

Develop scenarios that comprise solutions (day in the life)

Identify audiences who are impacted by scenarios (day in who’s life?)

Articulate tasks that audiences execute in scenarios (things they do)

Build detailed use cases around tasks and audiences (things they need to perform tasks

Identify content needed by audiences in specific use cases (things they need to perform tasks)

Develop organizing principles for content (arrange the things they need according to process, task or other organizing principle)

16


Putting theory into practice

• Start with content

• Develop the taxonomy

• Create metadata fields

• Assemble into content types

• Align personas with use cases

• Create site map based on use cases

• Develop wireframes from site maps

• Create document libraries and navigation based on site maps and wireframes

Content Audit

Taxonomy Metadata Content Types

Personas/ Use

Cases Site Maps Wireframes

Document Libraries

17


Example exercises from IA course

1. Content audit and analysis

2. Brainstorming and post it note exercise

3. Develop straw man taxonomy

4. Import terms into term store in SharePoint

5. Develop metadata attributes (site columns)

6. Content modeling

7. Requirements and themes

8. Personas, audiences, tasks and content

9. Use cases and scenarios

10. Site map development

11. Wireframes, libraries and views

12. Search scenarios and configuration

13. Governance processes

18


Content audit and analysis - Steps to Content Analysis

• Discuss with users

• Brainstorm on locations

• Determine how and where people access content

Initial determination of

content

• Determine amounts

• Determine types

• Determine condition

• Amount of redundant, outdated and trivial content

Sample content from across

repositories (audit)

• Use automated processes to itemize all content

• Look for reusable organizing principles

• Look for patterns

• Determine ownership

Inventory all content in scope

• Remove outdated content

• Determine migration approach

• Identify highest value information

Clean up and triage

19


Brainstorming Post it Note Exercise

You have been assigned to represent

the consulting group during a planned

migration to SP2010.

Review sample documents

Brainstorm other kinds of documents

that Acme, as a consulting firm, would

generate.

Consider core organizing principles and

content characteristics

20


Taxonomy Development - Taxonomy is an enabler…

• Every organization is struggling with findability

• Content management applications, search tools, workflow applications, customer

relationship management systems, etc all strive to create views of information that

are in the context of work processes

• What is the key component to any of these initiatives?

Having a common language in which to:

•Describe

•Communicate

•Translate

information between applications and between user audiences

21


Taxonomy Development - Relationship of Taxonomy to Information Architecture

• Taxonomy is the foundation for information architecture

• Every design element in SharePoint requires a consistent set of organizing principles

• If we start with the core organizing principles first, the IA is a matter of structuring

these into the constraints and constructs of SharePoint elements

Site collection hierarchy - How multiple sites relate to one another, global navigation across

sites

Site navigation – Organizational construct within a site, how document libraries are named

and organized

Document library organization – How libraries sort, organize and view documents

Content model construction - Metadata fields (columns) that comprise content types

List definition – Values that drive fields (columns) that use controlled vocabularies

Faceted search – Metadata fields that are exposed to users to perform attribute based

search. Facets depend on user context and content model

Roles for security and personalization – Types of users that have specific privileges or who

may be interested in specific subjects

22


Import terms into term store

Group

Term Set

Terms

Term

Attributes

23


Develop metadata attributes (site columns)

• Definition – A Site Column is a reusable construct that can be assigned to one or

more lists, libraries and/or content types.

• Represent an attribute or piece of metadata and are used to help ensure

consistency of application and determine how data is stored and displayed.

• Used for:

Content enrichment

Workflow

Managing information lifecycle

Sorting, filtering and grouping documents and/or list items

Terminology Check: Property = Field = Metadata = Column

24


Content Modeling - Modeling Metadata

• Metadata is often modeled in a spreadsheet outlining:

25


Content modeling -Content Models Built on Core Content Type

26


Requirements and Themes - Requirements Analysis

• Summary of data and observations from a variety of sources

summarized into key themes

27


Requirements Analysis

• Summary of data and observations from a variety of sources

summarized into key themes

• Important to have an audit trail for source of observations

28


Personas, audiences, tasks and content

• Personal Profile

• It took some doing, but Jonathan Miller

found a workable balance between being

the single dad of a 6-year-old and working

a full schedule at a venture capital firm.

With childcare help from his mother,

mother-in-law and a part-time babysitter,

Jonathan’s daughter has returned to a

semblance of the secure, reassuring

existence she had when her mother was

alive. With stability at home renewed,

Jonathan has been able to focus time on

his career.

• Jonathan’s role as a strategic investment

analyst at the venture capital firm rose

from the ashes of a company that

shuttered its doors after the dot-com

implosion. He was CFO at the defunct firm

and had befriended the VP of the venture

firm. Jonathan has dreams of becoming a

partner of the firm but given the tough

economic climate, that goal seems further

off.

• Because Jonathan doesn’t compromise in

spending time with his daughter, he often

works on projects late into the night after

he puts his daughter to bed. He doesn’t

hesitate to avail himself of useful Internet

tools and websites, but doesn’t have much

time or interest for gratuitous surfing.

• Jonathan is talented at distilling risk

management, insurance and financial

advice into consumable reports for his

bosses. He takes full advantage of the

resources at his disposal: sophisticated

research databases at the office and his

extensive network of professional

contacts. He will use the Web to the

degree that it adds quality to his work

product.

Jonathan Miller Domestic Business Customer

“I will take

knowledge from

whence it comes”

background

• 44-year-old, man, widower, 6-year-old daughter, moderate

• BS in Electrical Engineering, SMU; MBA Harvard

• Works at venture capital firm in Boston; lives in Back Bay

• $240K annual income / $2M net worth

• Hobbies: Tennis, local politics, chess

• Favorite Web sites: CNN, Yahoo! Finance, Hoovers,

Edgaronline

attributes

• Heads-down, methodical, thorough

• Highly intelligent, respectful, task-oriented

• Confident in his abilities, but humble enough to

incorporate others’ expertise

site needs

• Useful risk management information and tools that will

help him analyze and decide

• Comfort that ABC not only knows risk, but provides related

advisory services; ease in navigating between the two

• A comprehensive catalog of services that can be

uncovered without excessive navigation

• Clear contact information regarding different aspects of

risk management

Featured Scenario:

Scenario

Features

Behavior

Jonathan has been asked by his firm’s VP of Business Development to assess

the financial soundness of four business plans. The plans have one thing in

common – they all involve enhancing or expanding global operations.

Jon quickly assesses the revenue and cost profile, but does not have an

adequate handle on the risks. He needs to quantify the risks, assess their

impact on each plan, and validate their risk mitigation.

Six months earlier at an HBS reunion, Jonathan met up with an old grad school

buddy who told him about his wife who worked at ABC as an international

underwriter.

Jon decides to check out AIG’s website to see if it can provide him with

information and guidance on international risk and specifics on each country.

• Product and services categorization

• Risk assessment tools

• Other tools, presentations, etc., to help him help us sell

• After tucking in his daughter, Jon points his browser to abc.com. He

navigates (searches?) to “corporate risk” and finds highly relevant risk

management information and tools (e.g., spreadsheet templates).

• Jon clicks on a catalog of AIG’s risk advisory services, spots an entry titled

“Global Risk Analysis,” and reads the short blurb.

• Jon, convinced that ABC is capable of helping him, dials the number listed

on the site, and schedules a conference call with the advisory group.

• Jon makes approval of two of the plans contingent on the companies

adding certain insurance coverage to their risk management plans –

coverages he learned about on the ABC site.

Alternative Scenarios

• A new ABC product is introduced; Jon wants to note which IPOs in his portfolio

should consider it

• Jon is already a customer

• Jon is cross-sold life insurance

• Jon wishes to begin researching savings options for his daughter’s college

education

“Establish relationships at all levels through professional and valuable experiences”

Jonathan uses the abc.com website to help

him make business decisions through

online information and tools

Audience: Business

Country: USA

Language: English

29


Personas, Audiences, Tasks and Content

• Audiences need content to support tasks

• In some cases, we can develop a matrix that maps the audience needs to specific

tasks and content that supports those tasks

• This matrix is useful when performing content reviews and analysis and ensuring

that use cases are supported by appropriate content and organizing principles

30



31



Approximately 100 tasks plus several

not covered

32


Use Cases and User Scenarios

• Users can be identified by their characteristics, tendencies, preferences, and

aptitudes through the development of user profiles and personas

A profile is a description of a user role based on their job tasks and objectives

A persona is a description of their personality and details of their lifestyle

• Use cases are specific, step by step interactions with a system

• Scenarios are a “day in the life”, higher level description of the things that they need

to accomplish

33


Use Cases and User Scenarios - Workflow and Process

• Use Cases provide step by step instructions. They describe how each type of user interacts

with an application. They are also depicted as diagrams that visualize the steps and paths

needed to complete a task...

User Cases are used test the ability to locate specific content

based on labeling and the hierarchy mental model

Can also be used to test simulated faceted search

34


Use Cases and User Scenarios - Example User Scenario

35


Use Cases and User Scenarios - Example Use Case

36


Site Map Development - Navigation

Problem: Fragmented user experience

when navigating between different site

collections

Navigation is

“naturally” only

within a Site

Collection

Solution: Requires custom development for

the creation of a consistent experience

across the environment

• Specific to a Site Collection

• Based largely on Sites and Sub Sites

• Quick launch shows “current site” elements

• Top-level navigation shows sub sites and peers

37


Site Map Development - Card Sort

38


Site Map Development - Clustering/Grouping

Goal is to have users group like

types of content together in

meaningful ways.

Provide an intuitive,

unambiguous and meaningful

name for the group of content

39


Site Map Development - Site Map Design

Purpose: Provide a visual illustration of the logical organization of site content

Named Cluster

40


Site Map Development - Exercise

Brainstorm a site map for how content

might be organized for ACME Consulting

41


Site Map Development - Implementation Challenges

• Common need to create multiple sites and site collections due to volume of content,

management of security and permissions etc.

42


Site Map Development - Sample ACME Site Map

43


Wireframes, Libraries and Views - Document Library

• A listing of documents presented in a row (content) and column (metadata) format.

Some examples:

Product Documents (fields for Name, Description, Resource Type, Author, Topic etc.)

Type of

Document

Document

Metadata

44


Wireframes, Libraries and Views - Exercise

Create document libraries

Create 2 views

add navigational hierarchy

add key filters etc.

45


Wireframes, Libraries and Views - Wireframes

• A Wireframe provides a blueprint that represents the framework for how content and

other user interface elements are organized within a page template.

• Intentionally intended to illustrate conceptual layout and therefore often lack real

content examples and visual design.

• Primarily focus on:

Types of information presented and content priority

Features and functionality

Common elements such as headers, footers, global, utility and secondary navigation

• Developed based on a combination of information modeling and access

requirements .

46


Wireframes, Libraries and Views - Concept Modeling – “Quote”

47


Wireframes, Libraries and Views - Concept Modeling – “Breach”

48


Wireframes, Libraries and Views - Sample Wireframe for Search

49


Governance Processes - Who Needs Rules?

Where is the Governance?

50


Governance Processes - The Technology-Centric Approach

• It’s commonplace with SharePoint to start with the technology first and push off the

gathering and documentation of requirements until later, if at all.

Adopted by IT followed by the provisioning of a few sites as business users become aware

of its existence (easy to deploy).

Mass proliferation of sites, lists and libraries and an assortment of individuals and groups

start to turn on various bits of functionality resulting in a deployment that is haphazard and

confusing.

• SharePoint has been specifically designed to remove management of the

information environment away from IT and into the hands of business users.

Governance becomes crucial since many organizations lack standard ways of managing

content.

Permissioning and site management are often dropped into the lap of a single or small

group of uninformed individuals that are unaware of best practices in areas like content

management, information architecture, taxonomy and metadata

51


Governance Processes - Why Governance

• The SharePoint environment is only as good as the underlying structure that

supports it. Without governance, even the best designed implementations will fail.

Governance is what makes it work and is the glue that holds it all together.

• Because businesses evolve and requirements change, SharePoint projects are

never really complete.

Maintenance and enhancement activities are an ongoing process.

• Need to continuously update and maintain the overall information strategy and

content models as business requirements evolve.

Includes taxonomy, metadata, controlled vocabularies, and content structure.

Changes however, cannot just happen on a whim, maintenance and governance processes

must be put in place to systematically review proposed modifications.

• Without governance:

Increased operational costs - wasted time

Decreased findability - Difficult to find the “right” content

52


LESS STRUCTURE MORE STRUCTURE

Chaotic Processes Controlled Processes

Problem solving

Collaboration

Accessing information

Answering questions

Knowledge Creation Knowledge Reuse

ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Spans Structured and Unstructured Processes

CL

AS

S o

f T

OO

L

Blogs Records

Management

Document

Management

Process

Management Wikis Collaborative

Spaces

Instant

Messaging

Email

Management

Web Content

Management

Learning

Management

Digital Asset

Management

My Sites Centralized

Publishing

Governance Processes

53


Unfiltered Reviewed/Vetted/Approved

Lower Value Higher Value

Lower Cost Higher Cost

RELATIVE VALUE OF CONTENT

Not all content is of equal value

TY

PE

OF

CO

NT

EN

T

(More difficult to access) (Easier to access)

Formal Tagging/Organizing Processes

Message

text

External News Example

deliverables

Discussion

postings

Interim

deliverables

Content

Repositories

Success

Stories

Benchmarks

Approved

Methods

Best Practices

Social tagging

(“folksonomy”)

Structured tagging

(taxonomy)

Governance Processes

54


Governance Processes - Establishing a Governance Model

• Centralization vs. decentralization (control vs. freedom)

• Different types of sites frequently require different governance policies

Globally scoped sites, such as a corporate Intranet, usually apply stricter governance over

information management than do team collaboration sites

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=33a8c9e0-57c2-4ae5-99e3-8826ab9dd701&displaylang=en

55


Training Opportunities

• SharePoint Information Architecture (3 days)

Houston, TX – January 18-20, 2012

Washington, DC – February 8-10, 2012

Chicago, IL – March14-15, 2012

Los Angeles, CA – April 11-13, 2012

Learn more and register: http://www.earley.com/training/sharepoint-information-

architecture






56


SharePoint Information Architecture 3 Day Hands-on Course

• The Information Architecture Process

User Research & Requirements Gathering

Audience and Process Analysis

Roles, Responsibilities, Use cases, Personas and scenario development

Content Modeling and Content Type Definitions

Metadata Schemas and Taxonomy Development

Search Integration

• Term Store Management

Creating and Managing Groups

• Creating and Managing Content Types

Properties (Site Columns, Workflow, IM Policies)

Overview of Content Hubs

Adding Content Types to Document Libraries

• Creating Metadata for Content Enrichment

Core Metadata Schemas

Leveraging Managed Metadata and the Term Store

• Governance

Governance planning

Operationalizing governance using platform capability

57


MetaVis Architect

• With course registration you get a free license for MetaVis architect.

• Ability to explore, view and document SharePoint sites

• Tools to compare designs from site to site

• Ability to push and synch design elements

• Provides oversight, enforcement and governance over site design standards



Tools Can Help Address Challenges

with Building Taxonomies in

SharePoint

59


System Wide Awareness

60


SharePoint Taxonomy Challenges

• Collaboration

• Standardization/Replication

• Must be designed online

• Complex to redesign

61


Visual Designer

62


Collaboration

• Visual Notes

• Save, email and print out

63


Redesign and Standardize

• Reuse content types,

columns and list

• Compare Sites

• Search

64


MetaVis Architect Demo



Wrap up and Questions

66 Copyright © 2011 Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Please fill out the survey that should be in

your inbox.

Let us know what topics you are interested in and how we can

improve the series. Email your suggestions to

[email protected]

67


Contact

Seth Earley CEO Earley & Associates Phone: 781-820-8080 Email: [email protected] Follow me on twitter: sethearley

Connect with me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sethearley

Andrew Celentano Director, Business Development Earley & Associates Phone: 617-721-6092 Email: [email protected]


www.linkedin.com/in/sethearley


68 Copyright © 2011 Earley & Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you