Intranet nirvana: A 12-step plan to deliver an award-winning intranet

You've been tasked with relaunching your firm's intranet, but are not sure where to start. You have a vision in mind and are ready to move - to break new ground, to do something really different. But, you also need a structured process for developing or relaunching your intranet. You need a blueprint to success that's been assimilated over the years by intranet experts and will deliver real business benefits, irrespective of your starting point, firm size
or budget.

In-side Track is the 12-step plan to intranet success - follow it to create an intranet which delivers your organisation's objectives and might even win you an award.

1. Set objectives

In-side Track starts with the setting of objectives. What do you want your intranet to achieve for the firm, and how will you measure success? As with any other well-run project, you need a clear and measurable statement of objectives which will provide
a reference point throughout and provide final confirmation that you achieved what
you set out to.

Intranet objectives can be hard, tangible objectives, such as man hours saved (if your site is integrated with how people work and these kinds of improvements are your intention). Or, they can be tougher to articulate. Perhaps the role of the intranet is to support internal communication objectives, such as making important announcements available to all in real time. Note also that not all objectives may be achieved instantly - you may have to track your success measures (KPIs) for some time after going live.

2. Obtain backing and ownership

When you're pulling together your intranet objectives, consider who will stand behind them through thick and thin. Is this initiative being driven or requested by someone senior in your organisation? From the ground up or from middle management? Whatever the answer, you will need someone senior who is prepared to stand fully behind the intranet's objectives. They must provide or secure the funding, sign off the relevant communication and be prepared to defend it as your firm's priorities inevitably shift and change.

If you don't have senior support, you should question whether this is an initiative you really should be spending your time on. Who provides the senior support for your new intranet in development may also answer another important question - who will own the intranet after it goes live?

3. Choose the right technology

Once you have established and agreed objectives with a senior sponsor, you can start to expand that document to include the full business requirements and then use those requirements to drive and document the most appropriate technology solution.

Are you looking to drive top-down communications in a very structured way, or is your new intranet all about collaboration? If you opt for a full social solution, have you done a culture check to see if your firm is social ready? Many social initiatives fail simply because firms have not achieved the right level of culture change before implementing social business software.

Consider also the scope of your intranet: is this a global solution or one applicable to only one region or division?
Is there an existing solution which is already in use that could fast track
your development?

4. Identify project resources

It makes sense to consider the resources available to you early on, particularly the size of the team working on the project and their skill set. This will certainly drive whether your new intranet will be an in-house build or something you decide to outsource to a vendor. If you are outsourcing the build, make sure you factor in time and have a practical plan for knowledge transfer amongst your staff.

5. Agree governance and ownership

This is a great time to start thinking about and agreeing your governance model. What balance do you want to achieve between central control and devolved access? The size of your intranet team and resources relative to the size of your firm is just one factor which may determine your overall governance model.

If the management of the intranet is to be devolved to departments and regions, consider how you will maintain consistency of user experience with multiple editors and who will be responsible for what. It is important to have clearly-documented roles and responsibilities for the day-to-day running of the intranet - particularly when questions arise about content currency.

In a traditional intranet, a central team would own the templates and the processes, whilst the content would be owned by people in the business. While this model is much more about self-publishing with a social solution, some level of governance is still important to ensure a great user experience which is credible within the whole organisation.

6. Establish project management

Once you have completed steps 1 to 5 above, which should all be documented and signed up to by the key parties, it's time to recruit a project manager and initiate the project. An experienced project manager will lay the groundwork for a successful project delivery. If you don't have access to a qualified project manager, the PRINCE or equivalent methodology can be referred to and adapted to your needs - just adjust the methodology to
the size of your firm and project.

The key deliverables of the setup
phase include:

• a signed-off business requirements document (steps 1-5 above);

• a clear statement of roles and responsibilities (RACI matrix);

• a stakeholder map;

• a project plan; and

• an identified test group.

You should already have identified and grouped the major stakeholders as part of your requirements documentation and solution definition. However, there will be others you need to consider. Often, a small team workshop is a good way of creating this map. Agree who will be responsible for which stakeholders and how they prefer
to be kept informed.

Finally, you need a project plan which outlines a clear timeline for delivering the different elements of the project. Start with the planned go-live date and work your way backwards - this will help you to see pretty quickly if your delivery date is realistic. And, make sure you have organised to have the right people resources available at the different stages of the plan.

7. Create concepts and prototypes

With the project set-up activities complete, you can progress to creating some flat concepts of what your new homepage (and subsequent pages) might look like.

If you are working with an agency, they may suggest going straight to prototyping. The main advantage of this approach is users find it much easier to envision what the new site will look like and, as a result, will be more engaged and give better-quality feedback.

At this stage, it is also important to continually review and prioritise the features and functionality requirements by categorising them as 'nice to haves' or 'must haves' (MoSCoW model).¹ It will help you later down the line if, due to time or financial constraints, you have to deprioritise some elements.

Included in the concept and prototyping stage is the site architecture, including possible user journeys through the site, location of the search toolbar, integration with other systems and the navigation design.

The navigation can be one of the most debated parts of an intranet project, so I recommend using a data-driven and defendable method such as tree testing to deliver a navigation which is driven by users and not departmental structure. Tree testing, a branch of user experience testing, is most powerful in the hands of user experience experts. However it is a relatively simple concept that can be picked up and used effectively by first-time users with a reasonably-priced pay-as-you-go online service.

8. Build the intranet

With concepts and prototypes agreed,
and features prioritised, you can progress
to the build stage of the project.

Think about whether a Waterfall or Agile methodology is best suited to your organisation and timeframe, and how you will maintain interest with stakeholders whilst the build cycle is underway. How will you deal with delays and determine readiness for going live? Bugs and issues will no doubt occur during the build cycle, so ensure you have a process in place
for logging and dealing with them.

9. Pilot the intranet

Depending on the size of your organisation, you may consider a pilot before going live. Medium and large-sized organisations would typically open up access to a small and controlled group before launching to the full employee population to mitigate the risk of non-acceptance.

10. Test user acceptance

The pilot can be combined with user acceptance testing, with the pilot group being invited to provide feedback and confirm the agreed functionality is working as it should.

If you choose not to run a formal pilot (and this may not be necessary in smaller firms) you should ensure all functionality is tested and broadly acceptable by the key users. The functionality and design should also be signed off by the main customer
or sponsor.

11. Roll it out across the firm

As part of your project preparation, you will have already considered and documented your go/no go criteria for launch and created your communications plan. Now is the time to get the project team together and go through that checklist before giving the go-live decision. Consider a staggered rollout by communicating in an agreed order to an agreed target audience. This will mitigate peak loads which may bring down your new system.

Also, consider keeping the old intranet running in parallel until the launch has been deemed successful. Old information should be archived before taking the decision to switch off the old intranet - you may be surprised at how many requests you get for information created and stored many years ago which you might consider irrelevant.

If you are doing a URL (web address) switch from the old to the new site, do this over the weekend, with a rollback plan in case of issues, and fully test it in all locations/regions before communicating success.

12. Use feedback for development

So now you have launched your new site to great acclaim and can breathe a sigh of relief. However, this is just the start of your journey. Great intranets are living, breathing things, which grow and change and follow the pulse of the organisation.

You now need to ensure the homepage is regularly changing and is brought alive by imaginative photography and authentic articles. In doing so, your intranet will build up trust amongst the workforce such that it becomes the first place they go to for information and to do their work.

Paul Hewitt specialises in the optimisation of intranet/social platforms. Recent projects include a major intranet consolidation programme incorporating an enterprise social network and decommissioning out-of-date intranet
sites at a global bank.

Reference

1. The MoSCoW method is a
   prioritisation technique used in management, business analysis, project management and software development to reach a common understanding with stakeholders
   on the importance they place on the delivery of each requirement. It is also known as MoSCoW prioritisation or MoSCoW analysis.