Only a few years ago, most businesses felt the pain of being software licensees. The cycle went something like this: 

1. Issue an RFP, then pay big bucks for proprietary software.
2. Pay annual service agreement fees so the software company will provide tech support.
3. Assign IT resources in your company to install, configure, and customize it.
4. Pay for trainers from the software company to train staff how to use it.
5. Endure endless installs of patches and upgrades.
6. Find out, a year or two later, that another company has a better software product now that wasn’t available when you purchased the other software. But now you’re too invested in the original software to switch to another. 

Sound familiar? That’s why Software as a Service, or SaaS, has become so popular over the last few years. Also known as Cloud Computing, ASPs (application service providers) or On Demand Software, some say SaaS is just a trendy new tech term for something that’s been around as long as the Web has been around. In the last coupld of years, however, there has been a cultural shift in the way businesses evaluate their software needs. And SaaS is looking like a better option, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses that don’t have the IT resources and infrastructure of larger-scale enterprises. 

The principle behind this is an application service provider can take advantage of economies of scale to offer cheaper, more reliable, and often better applications than companies could afford themselves. 

One example of this is Web content management systems (CMS, which provide a platform to make Web content changes less technical and more manageable. Typically, large companies who want to purchase enterprise-level CMS software pay capital costs of anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000, not to mention implementation and training costs, followed by ongoing operational costs for support, training and enhancements.   

A Vancouver-based company A Vancouver-based company (with offices in Miami as well), Sitemasher (www.sitemasher.com), offers an attractive and award-winning alternative. Their Sitemasher platform enables companies to design, develop and host a Website on Sitemasher, which has an integrated content management system that makes it easy for even non-technical staff to make content changes to the site. And it’s all offered for a basic subscription price of $99 a month for three seats (users). 

Kevin Kinghorn, Director, Website and New Media with the Vancouver Canucks, says Sitemasher was a clear choice for the redesign, hosting and management of their GM Place site (http://generalmotorsplace.com/), which will be completed later this year. 

“We’re very excited about getting our hands on (Sitemasher) and really figuring out new ways to leverage the power of the SiteMasher environment, and possibly developing some new features with the team. 

“It was easy to see how Sitemasher would help us in an environment where several different users of various skill levels are relied upon to maintain a corporate website.” 

Of course, one of the challenges with SaaS can be the level of support you receive. Some services provide real-time chat on their Website, a toll-free number, a peer-to-peer forum for users to post questions and get answers from other users, or an email address where you can send inquiries. But with some SaaS providers, levels of service can be, shall we say, less than desirable. 

Not so with Sitemasher, says Kinghorn. When asked what advantages they saw in using an SaaS instead of buying content management software and running it on their own servers, he cited their customer service experience. 

“That’s easy: the support and the development,” says Kinghorn. “The SiteMasher team has really gone out of their way to help make the transition easy – including conducting on-site training. And where a purchased CMS might fall short of our needs, they’ve developed the product to suit. Not only that, but their hosting environment is second-to-none, which takes a lot of strain off our IT department.” 

Although the Canucks team Website can’t switch to Sitemasher because all NHL teams are being hosted on the NHL’s CMS, Kinghorn says  there are several different applications for a product like SiteMasher within their organization 

“The SiteMasher team has been unreal. We’ve got very specific needs on this project. Whenever we’ve run into an issue, they’ve simply developed the product to accommodate them. It sounds like a line from a marketing brochure, but they’ve really blown us away.” 

The main risks in going with an SaaS provider are when a company’s IT systems require extensive integration with an SaaS application, when a company requires a large amount of customization from the vendor, and also when an SaaS company becomes financially unstable i.e. what happens if the system you’re relying on goes out of business overnight? Or is sold to another company? Or what if subscription prices go up drastically when it comes time to renew the contract? Each SaaS provide should be evalulated with these risk factors in mind.   

SaaS applications are usually priced on a per-user basis, often with a small minimum number of users and scalable plans for additional users and extra bandwidth and storage.  The types of SaaS applications available on the market right is very broad (see this site to look up SaaS providers by category: www.saas-showplace.com/saasproviderdirectory/saasapplicationcategory.html), and here are some examples of popular SaaS applications in some of those categories. 

Office productivity and tools: Zoho (http://zoho.com/) is a reputable SaaS company based in India that provides a wide range of office applications online at cheap or reasonable prices. There’s an online Word processor, spreadsheet application, document management, customer relationship management, project management, business intelligence…the list goers on and on. Free versions are available with limited features, and prices for additional service levels start from a few dollars up. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com/) bills itself as “the world’s favorite CRM,” and it is indeed one of the leaders in providing a customer relationship management database to organizations for sales, service, marketing, and call center operations. The company offers a full-featured CRM for as little as $9/month per user for their Group Edition.  

Online Invoicing: Freshbooks (http://www.freshbooks.com/) takes the challenge of invoicing off your desktop and onto the Web.  It can create, manage and send invoices, track time and expenses, and even accept payments through PayPal. There’s a limited free version and after that pricing starts at $14 per month. 

Media Monitoring and Collaboration: DNA13 (http://www.dna13.com/) helps companies manage their communications, public relations and media management processes online. It was recognized last December by IDC as “One of 10 Canadian New Media Companies to Watch.” It’s used by RBC, Westjet, Scotiabank, City of Calgary, L’Oreal and Nestle, to name a few. Prices for the service are not available on their Website. 

Internet Payroll: Ceridian Canada’s Powerpay Web (http://www.ceridian.ca/)  is an Internet solution that allows employers to input payroll data and process payroll on the Web. Pricing details are not available on the Website, but there is a base charge per payroll run plus a nominal fee for each payment produced. 

Performance Management and Compensation: Salary.com (http://www.salary.com/) offers on-demand software for talent management and compensation data for personal use, small business and enterprise level organizations. Prices are not available on the Website.

This article was originally published in Douglas Magazine. Garth A. Buchholz (Garth@DigitalPractices.com) is the President and Chief Usability Analyst at DigitalPractices Media Inc.

Here are 5 quick tips on naming your business, from the experts at BrandNewPerfect.Name:

1. We want the perfect domain name.

In the beginning, everyone pined over what seemed to be the perfect domain names – the obvious ones like realestate.com, entertainment.com and internet.com (how would you like to own the ‘internet’?). Then some creative upstarts such as Amazon.com came along and proved what everyone in the advertising world knew already…it’s not what your name is, but who knows your name. So if your brand came first before the Internet you’ll want to maintain that as your domain name (e.g. Metro-Goldwyn Mayer is MGM.com), but if you’re a new company, why now develop your brand with an original name, the way Twitter.com and Zoosk.com did (visit http://www.go2web20.net/ to see the names of new Web 2.0 companies). Coining a new name often makes it a lot easier to get the dot com you want, too.

2. Hey, that’s our name!

In many cases the “perfect name” for your company is already being used by another business, or else they’re using a similar sounding name. Before you even try to register a new business name or domain name, do a thorough search of the Internet, which can help you determine whether there are similar names being used anywhere on the planet. Check different spellings of the name, too. And even if they are being used, that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use your version. Find out if the name is trademarked. Are they in the same business as you? If not, it may not be a problem for you to call your business Purple Rose Florists if the only other similar company is Purple Rose Tattoos. You can also do a variation in the spelling of the name, or include other words in the name to distinguish it or make it more specific to your business, e.g. Great West Technology can be turned into Gr8 West Tech, or Halcyon Communications can be turned into Halcyon Wordsmiths International. Avoid trademark issues by consulting a lawyer so they can do a search for you in your own country and other countries as well, where the laws may be different.

3. We wish this weren’t our name!

Sometimes your current name and brand is a liability when it sounds too similar to something with negative connotations. Imagine if you ran a store in New York City called Twin Towers Photography? In a real life case, Greenleaf Marketing in Springfield, Missouri, decided to rebrand itself as Red Crow Marketing because their original name sounded too similar to Greenleaf Companies, a real estate company being investigated by state agencies. In those kinds of situations, it makes sense to go through the effort, expense and even risk of rebranding under a new name.

4. We need something that sounds edgy, contemporary.

Rebranding yourself with an edgy, Webby-sounding name doesn’t usually work unless you completely re-style your entire company, and even then it might just seem blatantly superficial and disingenuous to customers and business partners. If you’re a drycleaning company and you re-brand yourself as “e-Clean”, you’d better find a way that people can order drycleaning pickups online or some other Web-related services, otherwise you’ll risk sounding foolish. On the other hand, it doesn’t hurt to style yourself after what you want to be and where you want to be rather than where you are now. Should a name say something about what your business does? Not always. It helps if the name is intuitive to people so they can tell what you do, but once you build a brand you don’t need any further descriptors. For example, does the Coca-Cola Company need to be called Coca-Cola Carbonated Beverages? Instead of simply describing your company by what it is, e.g. American Glassworks, try creating a name that describes its qualities, what it does for the customer or client, or what kind of impact it will have. As a name, Yahoo! didn’t literally describe what the company was offering, but it did describe the exciting experience of finding new sites on the Internet.

5. We want to see our name up in lights.

Not every name will have a symbolic or visual quality, but that’s an important consideration because when it comes time to develop your brand expression – e.g. your corporate colors and logo – how would you like your graphic designer to depict your company. And is that going to be the right image for your company? The name Lion Security lends itself to an instant visual, and it suits that kind of company because it portrays power and strength, but would the same visual suit a retail story selling baby clothes? Perhaps, if it were visualized as a cartoon lion sitting beside a lamb. The point is that the way your name will be visualized is also important in the selection process, not simply the originality or availability of the name. Let’s not forget that a product or service can have its own unique name and sub-brand, too. Rather than just calling your new product “Digital Widgets,” to use a hypothetical example, find out whether your marketing experts or consultants suggest creating a sub-brand with a distinctive name (e.g. Widgetmania) that can be promoted both together and separately from your corporate brand. There are pro’s and con’s to sub-branding…but that’s another topic for another post.

Disclaimer: This article is offered for informational purposes as a free public service and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult your lawyer on all legal issues relating to domain names and trademarks. ]]> http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2009/02/23/how-to-win-at-the-name-game/feed/ 0 http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2008/12/16/10-quick-tips-to-help-you-find-unique-domain-names/ http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/2008/12/16/10-quick-tips-to-help-you-find-unique-domain-names/#comments Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:43:11 +0000 Garth A. Buchholz http://usabilitydesign.digitalpractices.com/?p=208

Here are 10 general tips on domain names for organizations to consider when shopping for a good domain name to register. Keep in mind these are rules of thumb, and there are often some exceptions to these, but if you research your domain names well before you register them or use them, you’ll spare yourself unnecessary time, money and aggravation. 

1. NAME LENGTH

Remembers the basics – some usability studies have found that more than 16 characters is too long for a domain name. But it depends on how you’re going to use it, too. If your intended users are likely to search for it using a long word or combination of words rather than typing out the URL, then a long domain might be the best thing in some cases.

2. TOP LEVEL DOMAINS

Consider most TLDs (top level domains) including .net, .biz, .name, and country domains, but .com is still the best. Dot org domains are for non-profit organizations, and even though this isn’t a requirement in order to register at dot org, people will assume your site is a non-profit if you use that TLD. Many country-specific domains require that you are a resident of that country in order to register a domain with that TLD, e.g. Canada’s .ca

3. TRADEMARKS

Be careful that your domain name doesn’t sound too similar to that of another company on the Web, ESPECIALLY if their name and domain name is trademarked, and ESPECIALLY if you’re in the same line of business as them. Do a few Google searches using the proposed domain name and some variations on it to see who else is using them, if anyone.

4. BRAND NAMES

Your domain name doesn’t necessarily have to be the same as your organization’s name, but it can get confusing for people if it isn’t.  If the name of your organization or brand appears to be unavailable in its most obvious format, e.g. “TheNameofMyCompany.com”, look at the possibility of using other TLDs  (see #2). Another possibility is to name a domain based on what the company is trying to achieve online. For example, if your name is ABC Plumbing and abcplumbing.com is already taken, try registering a domain name such as “abconline.com” or even the more spunky “virtualplumber.com.”

5. DOMAIN NAME VARIATIONS

If you own other domain names that aren’t linked to a site, and you’d like people searching for those names to hit your site, then you can always redirect them to your main Website. One caution: be careful of this, because sometimes search engines will index your site under one of the other domain names not the main domain name the site is hosted on.  

6. DOMAIN NAME BLOOPERS

Before you decide on a domain and register it, consider that it may not read the way you want it to when it’s read as one word, all lowercase. The Web has many funny examples of this, e.g. the travel site ChooseSpain.com” can be read as “ChoosesPain.com”

7. HYPHENATION

Many hyphenated versions of names may be available, but that doesn’t mean they’re desirable or even legal. You won’t get away with trying to register mic-rosoft.com, for example. Also, people will become confused about whether the domain name requires a hyphen or not, and if they type it in without the hyphen, they may end up on the wrong site.

8. SEARCH ENGINES

Something else to consider. In many ways, domain names don’t matter because most people are now using Google to find sites rather than typing in a URL or finding it in their Favorites/Bookmarks.

9. DESCRIPTIVE NAMES

On the other hand, sometimes it helps your search engine ranking to have a descriptive domain name as search engines will index it accordingly, e.g. “DeliciousDonuts.com.” There can be several search engine optimization considerations when researching domain names.

10. NEW WORDS AND SPELLING

Finally, you can always coin a new domain name by using a different spelling for a commonly known word or words, or by combining commonly known words, but remember that people may forget the unique spelling or the coined term if it’s not intuitive enough, or not marketed well enough.

 As a brief footnote, don’t ever forget to renew a domain name if it’s important to you, or you may never be able to reclaim it again except at a high cost.  While there is nothing wrong with reserving names (as long as you’re not reserving a name that was trademarked at the time you registered the domain), many Internet “cybersquatters”  buy up domains to resell rather than to use for themselves. 

They may contact you to offer to sell a domain name of interest, or you may even contact them if the site appears to be for sale. Let’s just say these domain names are offered at vastly inflated prices, and if you negotiate, they will usually drop their price but rarely to its true market value. 

Disclaimer: This article is offered for informational purposes as a free public service and should not be construed as legal advice. Consult your lawyer on all legal issues relating to domain names and trademarks.

1. Create a Google Gadget.
   You can create Google Gadgets such as a countdown timer (to an event), a list (of ideas, suggestions, products, etc), a microblog (what you’re doing or working on) or a YouTube channel (videos about your company, service or product), then publish it on the Google network for other people to add to their customized iGoogle page. You can also email the Gadget link to a list of people.  
2. Post comments on related articles.
   Many news sites or ezines include an option to leave comments at the end of articles. Some like CNN even track backlinks from blogs that link to the article. Search for articles related to your company’s business, then post an intelligent response or comment on the article, including your company’s name, URL and/or email address, if possible. 
3. Write a press release.
   Your press release can be about anything, but should be tied to something timely such as a recent event or announcement. Many sites such as the ones cited here offer a free press release service. 
4. Create a Facebook app.
   Facebook makes it relatively easy to develop an application that Facebook users can add to their profiles and pages. Facebook still has some buzz in traditional media channels, so sometimes you might even get some earned media (an editorial article written about your company) because of the interest in your new Facebook app.
5. Piggyback on someone else’s email subscriber database.
   Wouldn’t it be great to get a plug for your company in someone else’s mailing list? If you know of a company or an individual (such as a blogger) with a sizeable mailing list, offer to barter some services or products in exchange for a mention in their next email newsletter or notification. If you do have your own mailing list, you can ask another list owner to include a link to your sign-up form, or offer to add their sign-up form to your page if it seems that subscribers on each site may be interested in the other site’s content as well.   

Got more freebs? Share the wealth…let us know about your tips by posting them here. 

Email: Garth@DigitalPractices.com

* Services cited in the list above were free at the time this list was published, and have been published here as a service to readers. Some of these sites may offer fee-based options as well.

(click on thumbnail image above to view full size diagram)

In 2004, author Lawrence Lessig coined the term “email bankruptcy.” After he spent 80 hours in one week sorting through email that had been in his inbox since January 2002, he concluded that “without extraordinary effort” he would never be able to catch up. So he sent out an automated message to everyone who wrote him, then deleted all their emails.

Many office workers, and most senior managers and executives, dread email. Just a few years ago, in the late ‘90s, business leaders used to freely give out their email addresses to anyone who asked because it allowed them to reduce phone calls or keep their numbers private. Now email overload has become the biggest wave of the digital tsunami.

Are unmanageable email volumes really the issue, though? A 2005 Intranetjournal.com article cites several behavioral and time-management issues causing information overload at work. “External causes” such as constant interruptions by colleagues (either in person, by phone, or email) certainly contributed to employees’ info stress, but there were also other “internal causes” for personal unproductivity and information overload, such as:

• An obsessive need to be “plugged in”, such as constantly checking email or voicemail;
• Poor attention span and lack of focus;
• Rampant multitasking and the inability to prioritize tasks.

Email is not the only digital wave overwhelming workers. Ironically, Blackberrys (affectionately called “crackberries” by those who have become addicted to them), cellphones, (both voice and text messaging) Facebook sites, blogs and other electronic communications help keep us connected at all times while subversively disconnecting us as well.

The Consumer Research Center of the Conference Board recently released the results of a survey of 1,800 affluent consumers in seven countries. The report found that “the largest share of luxury consumers (44%) and the largest share of consumers in each country most strongly agree that ‘luxury is having enough time to do whatever you want and being able to afford it.’ So, for luxury consumers worldwide, time is the ultimate luxury.”

One of the leading authorities on conquering information overload is David Allen, whose 2001 book, “Getting Things Done,” is a guide to “the art of stress-free productivity.” Allen writes about the problem of “open loops”: uncompleted tasks, unresolved issues and unanswered emails. His solution is to simplify by channelling all the tasks in our lives into a single “in box.”

Most productivity or time-management experts have two basic strategies for handling large volumes of incoming mail: 1) prioritize and organize emails by moving them into sub-folders or by using inbox rules, or 2) simply delete or ignore any emails that don’t require a response.

Here’s an example of organizing emails by priority. You can either use inbox rules to move emails from specific people or with specific subject lines to sub-folders. Or if you want to manually sort your email, you can create sub-folders as in the example below, or use coded labels, e.g. UR (Urgent – response required), IR (Important – response required), FR (Follow-up required); PR (phone response only), and NR (no response required – file or delete). This can help you triage your inbox so you respond the most important messages first.

The problem with inbox rules is they don’t always work as intended, and sometimes they can actually cause us to miss important messages unintentionally. And the problem with manually sorting emails by priority is that this process takes time as well. You have to at least browse a message to sort it by priority, and in the time it takes to browse some of them, you could almost skip the priority sorting and simply reply.

If time is a luxury for you and your employees, here are a few information management strategies to help you save time and turn information overload into information overdrive.

1. EMAIL

If you’re a busy executive or senior manager, delegate your emails as much as possible. Ask your Executive Assistant to read your email, respond to easy requests, and then send more urgent or time-sensitive emails to your attention. You could even request a second company email address that is private – available only to a small, select group.

If you don’t have an assistant, and you can’t control what email gets sent to you, remember that answering email is an administrative task like managing your budget or attending meetings. Find a quiet time of day when other staff are not around (e.g. 30 minutes before the office opens or 30 minutes before most people get back from lunch), then dedicate that time to checking voicemail and sorting/responding to emails.

It’s important not to lose productive time by getting the “email twitch”: feeling the urge to check your inbox every minute or every time you hear an email notification “ping.” Blackberrys are a wonderful to access your email but should be turned off when you’re at a meeting or working on something. Same thing applies to your personal Webmail accounts, e.g. Gmail or Hotmail. Some organizations allow employees to check their personal Webmail accounts from the office, but if you’re already feeling overloaded by your email inbox at work, don’t waste your time checking your personal emails during work hours.

Another email management strategy is to undertake some “human engineering” strategies to change the way people send emails to you. You can also use your inbox rules not only to move mail into different folders, but also to create an automated message that is sent to everyone who sends you an email message. For example: “Thank you for contacting me by email. I receive a large number of communications by email each day, so I can only respond to emails by priority. If your message is of an urgent nature, please call me at XXX-XXXX or drop by my office. If I do not respond to your email immediately, please be assured that I will follow-up on it as soon as possible.”

Of course, every time someone emails you, they will receive an automated message, and these will fill up the inboxes of chronic emailers – which should reinforce why you are trying to manage your own email volumes in a productive way!

2. CELLPHONES/BLACKBERRYS

Two things about voice communications devices create information management problems:

1. We have too many devices – we have a home landline phone, a personal cell, an office landline, a cellphone/Blackberry and sometimes even more.
2. We have too many voicemails, usually one for each of the devices mentioned above.

Make it a personal policy NOT to check your personal voicemail during the workday. At work, limit who has your business cell number to your boss, your assistant, and a few colleagues. If you have a landline, too, forward your landline to the cellphone when you’re out of the office, or vice versa when you’re in the office. Avoid having to login to several different voicemails by limiting the number of phones you use. But when you leave the office, leave your business cell and Blackberry at work if you can.

3. WEBSITES/FACEBOOK/MYSPACE/BLOGS

The World Wide Web is a great time-waster for employees and managers when they succumb to the temptation of browsing non-work-related sites during office hours. Well-intentioned Internet usage policies can help a bit, but instead of prohibiting such behavior, why not find ways to redirect your employees’ information explorations and exchanges into something productive? Channel your staff’s desire to express themselves by allowing them to create their own internal “homepages” profiling who they are and what they do, participate in collaborative workspaces (e.g. Sharepoint), or post to company blogs that are semi-moderated. New generations in the workforce will thrive on this, and you may find that this activity pays off in better internal communications, collaboration and knowledge management.

Garth A. Buchholz is an author, educator and corporate Web strategist at DigitalPractices.

A new IBM research report suggests that the best analogies for businesses in the future may no longer be the command structures of the military but the self-organising networks found in nature: schools of fish, flocks of birds and swarms of insects. This research, contained in The IBM Global Innovation Outlook 2.0 Report, reinforces Bioteam rule 10: Self-Organising Networks.
~ IBM’s Global Innovation Outlook

Imagine if core business skills and practices such as “time management” became professions unto themselves. You’d pay dues to the Time Management Institute, where you’d be credentialed as a Certified Time Manager; you’d be hired for your Time Management skills as a Level 4 Time Manager, and use only company-approved Time Management forms and templates. On every team there would have to be a designated Time Manager (certified and experienced, of course), and you would attend large “TM” conferences around the world.

Maybe Time Management is a skills and practice that is deserving of professional status give the fast pace of corporate life, but you get a sense from the example above that there is a tinge of absurdity to it. Time management, you might say, is certainly one of the core skills we use in business and government, but somehow having a formalized Time Management department and role is overkill. Why use a specialist for a skill that all business generalists should be practicing? There’s no question that someone whose profession is all about time management might have a better grasp of the issues, challenges and solutions around  it, but do we really need someone who’s only real function is to be an advisor, consultant and documentation-keeper?

I have similar questions around the formalization of Project Management over the last 20 years or so. Disclaimer: I’m a member of the Project Management Institute, and I’ve had to use project management techniques in my work as a Web manager and Web strategist. Note that I said I’ve used project management techniques, not Project Management. I’m not a certified Project Manager, though I have taken Project Management courses. In other words, I’m not one of the clergy, I’m just a layman who occasionally dons the robes to help the priests carry out the ritual liturgy.

Project Management was originally developed by people like Henry Gantt, and used by the Army Corps of Engineers in the first half of the 20th century for wartime and peacetime projects, such as building ships, dams, bridges and other structures. Engineers being the breed they are, project management as a discipline was carried into the world of technology and computer software, where it became widely popularized in the ’70s through ’90s as the role of technology became more and more essential to the world of business.  The Project Management Institute itself was only formed in 1969, even though something like “Project Management” had been around since the first World War.   

As an experienced Web architect and Web manager, I’ve seen how project management skills can provide an excellent framework for a Web design project, while Project Management proper can sometimes be a stifling, counter-intuitive nemesis to achieving effective results in usability and design. In many ways, Project Management, the discipline, has evolved into Project Management, the orthodoxy. The kind of dogma that Project Management professionals try to impose upon Web and other technology projects can result in Webs and Web services that are out of touch with the fast-paced Web 2.0 and 3.0 world we live in. Sometimes more effort is expended in documentation of project steps in overly-detailed MS Project charts and sundry PM templates than what the end product is worth in usability and creative design.

The fact is that the people who pay for expensive Web and other technology projects, the business stakeholders, owners, executives and investors, don’t really care about how you get there, but rather, what you’ve achieved when you finally get there. While some business executives pay lip service to the importance of “process” and “project discipline”, most of them also demand the right to circumvent those same sacrosanct processes and disciplines, not just occasionally but frequently, and this veto process often happens informally down the chain of command as well, as stakeholders in management positions lobby their executives to command changes to their projects. Project scope, timelines, even work breakdown structure — everything held in order with command-and-control protocols by PMs — are routinely tossed aside by the often subjective requirements of executives.

That’s okay. It’s just the way things are, and always have been. But the disciples of Project Management live in a fantasy command-and-control universe where scope creep is blasphemy, changes are “managed” (if only we lived in a universe where changes could be managed!) and dates on an MS Project Gannt chart are as constant to Project Managers as the constellations in the sky are to ocean navigators. Like litigators or medieval theologians, fastidiously detailed volumes of documentation are poured out, digitally and printerly, even though most “resources” assigned to a project and the project sponsors themselves never have time to read more than 5% of it because they’re too busy doing the actual work.

Actual work. If you’re someone who’s doing the actual work (that stuff they try to itemize line by painstaking line in the Work Breakdown Structures), you’ll find you don’t really have time to do a lot of the onerous documentation work that constitutes almost 50% of everything Project Managers do. The other 50% is mostly taken up by frequent meetings with people who are either doing the project or making the decisions about the project. Purely speaking, a real Project Manager doesn’t also act as a “resource”; their sole function is to manage the flow and output of project details,  timelines and deliverables.

Now we come to the mythical Ouroboros seen in the above woodcut, and explained in this verse from Plato’s Timaeus:  

“It had no need of eyes, for there was nothing outside it to be seen; nor of ears, for there was nothing outside to be heard. There was no surrounding air to be breathed, nor was it in need of any organ by which to supply itself with food or to get rid of it when digested. Nothing went out from or came into it anywhere, for there was nothing. Of design it was made thus, its own waste providing its own food, acting and being acted upon entirely with and by itself, because its designer considered that a being which was sufficient unto itself would be far more excellent than one which depended upon anything.”    

Has Project Management become a 21st century Ouroboros — a self-contained, self-referential and self-serving demi-profession whose practitioners have a vested interest in promoting PM mystique, building Project Management Office kingdoms, and harnessing business operations to their processes like oxen harnessed to a wagon? IMO, those who are creating Web services and building Web sites are well aware that projects have to be defined, resources have to be allotted, milestones have to be achieved, and deliverables have to be delivered. In the “old world”, before the Internet was popularized and digital technology was dominant, creative agencies such as ad firms, television production companies and record producers also had to channel creative projects through business requirements, and did so quite successfully through their own fluid processes without having a “Project Manager” in-house.

Back to my own experience…I use some Project Management techniques in my work, but usually in unorthodox ways. I don’t like Microsoft Project, for example, which is just a glorified spreadsheet with a few graphical enhancements. And I like some Project Management tools and templates, but only if I can customize them for specific projects. As for things like scope, it’s always easy to illustrate to project sponsors that they can expand scope all they want, as long as they can also expand budget and resources accordingly. As for deliverables, that’s often more a product of good communications and technical writing skills than “Project Management” rigor. If you’re working on a creative project, be it software or Webware, why spend all your time and effort documenting and tracking a project rather than allowing project dynamics to evolve and project “bioteams” to self-organize through hard work, good communications and creative thinking?

But that’s another topic for another day. Those who want to break out of the 20th century Project Management mold into a new way of managing projects in the 21st century would do well to investigate some of the principles behind self-organization, such as the Chaordic concept pioneered by Visa founder Dee Hock in the 1960s and 1970s when he was head of Visa International (visit the Chaordic Initiatives site or the Chaordic Commons site for more information). Or you can enlighten yourself and your organization with the ideas found in The Bioteaming Manifesto or in Ken Thompson’s fascinating blog on bioteaming, The Bumble Bee. 

Email Garth A. Buchholz

“Google may be the only company in the world,” says the Google corporate information page, “whose stated goal is to have users leave its Web site as quickly as possible.” In fact, a reported 81.9 million Web searchers per month use Google to locate content ranging from Jessica Simpson to Hurricane Katrina. Many of us don’t even bother using our bookmarks or favorites anymore-we just Google it when we need to find it.

Now that it’s so easy for people to search for anything in a fraction of a second and retrieve content buried in deep links thanks to Google and other high-speed tools such as MSN Search, is this creating a kind of laziness on the part of Web users? In the early days of the Web, we might have imagined that we’d become sophisticated online researchers in the future, but now it seems that everyone is just doing the “search lurch”: Enter a few key words, click through a few search results, and maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for in a few seconds… or maybe you’ll just give up and move on to something else. It’s like channel surfing with the remote, but on the Web.

We asked some well-known experts to comment on how our search habits are changing Web culture and even changing the way Web sites are being designed and maintained. Usability guru Dr. Jakob Nielsen founded the “discount usability engineering” movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods, including heuristic evaluation. Jesse James Garrett is a renowned author, interface designer, and information architect. Best-selling author and content expert Gerry McGovern is widely regarded as the number one worldwide authority on managing Web content as a business asset. Tara Calishain, an Internet researcher, is coauthor of the Google Pocket Guide and Google Hacks (O’Reilly), as well as other books on Internet searching.

Question: As the power and influence of search engines such as Google increase, will Web users bother going to homepages and trying to figure out each site’s navigation scheme? Or with our increasingly shortened attention spans and demands on our time, will we just Google everything?

Nielsen: Users have never wanted separate interaction designs on each Web site, and the associated learning overhead. That’s why it has always been a strong guideline to comply with user expectations and avoid deviant design. Search engines are simply making this trend stronger; they are not its cause. I know from user testing that one of the reasons users have been embracing search engines so warmly is as a way to liberate themselves from awkward and clumsy design on individual Web sites. One user told me: “I don’t want to navigate this information the way this Web site wants me to; I just want to go straight to the page I want, so I’m going to search for it.”  Garrett: I don’t think we should lament the passing of an era in which users had to master navigation schemes in order to use sites. In some ways, search may be the best thing that ever happened to navigation-we’re seeing lots of sites now paring their navigation back to just what’s really necessary and essential to user needs, rather than trying to cram an entire site map into the left rail on every page.

Calishain: I don’t think they’ll Google everything. I think instead what will happen-what is happening-is that standards are developing for site navigation. Users will not have to grasp new site navigation schemes since they’ll get used to going to a site and looking for the nav bar HERE and the content HERE and the search box HERE. I think people understand that search engines don’t include the entire Web. As long as that’s understood, they’ll further understand they can’t Google everything. They’ll have to explore sites.

McGovern: I think people everywhere are very impatient when they’re on the Web. If they don’t get what they’re looking for in the first page of search results, they’re not very likely to go to the second page. Very few people will use advanced search. I haven’t seen this basic pattern of behavior change in the last five years.

Q: Do you think it’s futile for site designers and information architects to struggle with developing effective navigation schemes for their sites? In other words, is search engine optimization becoming more important than navigation optimization?

Calishain: Good lord, I hope not. A truly effective navigation scheme, it seems to me, should prove effective for both a human visitor and a spidering ‘bot. The challenge is to build a structure that a ‘bot can appreciate and a human can understand, and build a vocabulary of description on your site that a human can appreciate and a ‘bot can understand. I believe these are complementary aims.McGovern: No. In my experience, there is a difference between the behavior of someone when they are on Google and when they are on an ordinary Web site. People may use Google to find a type of Web site, but then they are likely to navigate around it if it’s well-designed. They will often only resort to using search on that site if the navigation is poor.

Garrett: Navigation still has a very important role to play. First of all, there is a large audience for whom search is not their preferred method of information retrieval. Secondly, navigation helps users make connections between content elements that they might not otherwise make. Search is great when you’re looking for a particular piece of information; navigation helps you find information you didn’t know you were looking for.

Nielsen: Good navigation is still essential, especially local navigation to information in the neighborhood of the current page. First, search engines are not magic, so they don’t always lead users to exactly the right page. Sometimes users need to move around a little inside the site to zero in on the stuff they want. Second, Web sites often have additional information to offer that’s spread among multiple pages. This is especially true for B2B sites where products and services are too complex for a single product page to offer everything users want. There’s a need to navigate to whitepapers, spec sheets, and much more, and there’s also often a need to navigate between members of a product family before users can decide which one is the most appropriate for them.

Q: On the premise that Web users are already Googling more, navigating less, what would you recommend to site designers to make their sites more usable and searchable right now?

McGovern: Creating a good navigation will always be a core challenge for the Web designer. What is often forgotten is the relationship between well-organized content and search. The better organized and written your content is, the more searchable it is. And it’s not an either/or. Search and navigation needs to work in tandem, with some people using people to get to a certain part of the Web site, then using navigation to go further.Nielsen: Good usability has always been essential, since people have always left sites that were too complicated. The rise of search has simply lowered the threshold of what’s considered “too complicated” a good deal because users have nine other sites at their fingertips on the SERP [search engine results page]. There is now more of a tendency for users to dip into sites briefly for a very quick visit of 1-5 pages. As a result of this information-snacking behavior, Web sites must design to be attractive snacks and offer value for these ultra-short visits.

Calishain: If there are any pre-existing organization structures that would work on your site (organizing by date, alphabetization, card catalog number, etc.), use them. Consider using a site map. Have a Home button on each page. Put an About button somewhere, no matter how bloody obvious you think your site’s purpose is. Make sure that if someone does come to your site via Google that they have some way to quickly get to a summary of what your site is all about.

Garrett: It used to be that we could reasonably assume that most of the audience seeing a page deep in the site will have already seen the home page, a section page of some kind, and possibly some related content. As search engines become more effective, we have to acknowledge that users may not have all that context when they come to the page, and design every page as if it were the very first page the user sees in their experience of our site. The homepage is no longer the only place where we have to make a good first impression.

This article by Garth A. Buchholz was originally published by InformIT for Prentice Hall Technical Reference in 2005.

When Web customers click on a link, that’s an interaction, but when they submit a contact request, that’s a transaction of information – they’re send you their personal “content” and expecting the site to respond accordingly. They’re sharing their personal information and inquiries, and the Web site administrator is providing customer service in return. 

Back in the day when the Web was young, most commercial Web sites had very little content, yet never failed to include someone’s name and email address on the homepage. Google forward 10 years later and the “Contact” or “Contact Us” content is most often tucked into the header nav or footer nav. Click on it and you might get a mailform, a simple “Contact our Webmaster” link or, with some serendipity, you may find an actual phone number and mailing address. 

A December 2005 Jupiter Research report found that since 2000, the number of sites that responded to email inquiries within 24 hours continued to decrease. Only 45% of sites surveyed responded to email inquiries within 24 hours, and 39% of sites took three days or longer to reply, or did not respond at all. 

Last year when I was on the judging panel for the 2005 WebAward it struck me that of all the dozens of Web sites I was reviewing – and many of which were award winners in one category or another – it was rare to find a site that had extensive contact and customer service information. Most commercial Web sites, including public sector and NGOs, simply do not provide excellence in “customer service experience” when it comes to their customer contact transactions: 

1. CONTACT INFORMATION IS HARD TO FIND.

Contact info is hidden, obscured or limited to a simple “Contact the Webmaster” email link. To improve your site’s usability, make sure visitors can easily find contact information by displaying prominently on the homepage and in all headers/footers. Contact-related content should be transparent, comprehensive and responsive. 

2. NOT ENOUGH CONTACT INFORMATION.

If an organization wants to hide, why is it on the Internet? All Web sites should provide at least the names of the key people responsible for the organization and the site, as well as their contact phone numbers and email links. For larger organizations with publicly accessible offices, mailing addresses and street addresses should be provided as well. 

3. WEB SITES DON’T RESPOND OR TAKE TOO LONG TO RESPOND.

When a visitor contacts a Web site, the assumption is that a person responsible for the site within the organization will respond to their email at least by the next business day. Getting swamped with emails through your Web site? That’s your problem, not the customer’s. Don’t make your Web customers stand in a virtual lineup all the time just to get a simple email response. 

4. WEB CONTACT IS TOO IMPERSONAL AND INTANGIBLE.

After a customer clicks to submit their email, what evidence do they have of their transaction? The Jupiter Research report found that, of 92% of Web sites offering email as a customer support option, only 41% acknowledged receipt of customers’ messages with automated email responses. Also, in autoresponse emails and tracking emails, more sites should include a unique customer service number for tracking as well as an email address and/or telephone number as well as a customer service manager’s name that they can contact if they are not satisfied with the service they are receiving. 

5. CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE IS POOR WHEN SITES RESPOND TO WEB CONTACT TRANSACTIONS.

Make sure the follow-up to Web site contact transactions is friendly, personal (include a service agent’s first name and contact information) and effective. If it seems a request cannot be resolved by email, provide the customer with a way to elevate the request so that the issue/request can be resolved.

I have been developing unified content strategies for about 15 years and working with content management systems for about the same period of time. The unified content strategy came about as I realized that there was no clear strategy for creating multiple documents or learning materials for products and services for a company. They were often created by different individuals and inconsistent. Often I was asked to create multiple documents on a very tight budget and short timeframe. The only way to do this time and cost effectively was to develop a unified content strategy then develop the materials to support the strategy.

My experience with content management began when clients had more and more information to manage (ranging from 10,000 pages to more than 100,000 pages) and as I began to develop materials in SGML. SGML databases enabled me to manage elements of content, not just documents. It was a perfect fit to use content management to support the unified content strategy.Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy came about as a result of our work with our clients. The book answers the questions that each client asked as they started to work with us. Now when we start to work with a new client the client already understands the basic concepts and process so we can “hit the ground running”. The Rockley Group works on each project as a team, drawing on different skill sets at different times to most effectively address the client’s requirements. It was a logical step to draw on two of our senior consultants to develop the content of the book. The book also answers the many questions we get from participants in our conference presentations, webinars and workshops. The book provides a solid foundation for anyone hoping to improve the way they create, manage, and deliver content.  Many companies tend to leave the content strategy to the IT developers, and many IT developers tend to shy away from serious discussions about content.

In your opinion, how can companies ensure that a unified content strategy will be developed?

A business case for a unified content strategy should always be presented from the business perspective. That is, issues surrounding content are not merely technology problems. Rather, they are complex business challenges that affect a company’s bottom line, and should be addressed as such. The IT and the business side should be partners in a unified content project, with both sides responsible and accountable for process and quality improvements, reduced costs and ultimately, greater customer satisfaction.

In your book, you talk about separating form and content. It’s one thing doing that for structured content, but is there any risk in doing that with unstructured content?

The goal of a unified content strategy is to define structure for previously unstructured content. So, once you’ve analyzed and modeled your materials, the content is no longer unstructured. With content that is left unstructured, for example documents that are not broken down further than a title, subheadings and document body, you can still separate the form from the content.

The content is in fact structured, just to a very high level of granularity. If your authors create content using stylesheets or templates, the style tags can still be “mapped” to different formats for different media. However, if authors do not use styles or adhere to a template, you cannot easily separate format from content.

As you’ve written, creating metadata can be difficult and time-consuming. How can organizations learn to consistently create metadata across the enterprise for retrieval, tracking and assembling for re-use? Should there be a set of Internet standards for creating controlled vocabularies, etc?

Internet standards for creating controlled vocabularies would be helpful, but individual organizations don’t need to wait for these types of standards to go ahead and create their own guidelines and controlled vocabularies internally. Many sectors and industries already have terminology standards that can be adapted and used to create metadata guidelines.

To be successful, a unified content strategy should be considered as an enterprise-level endeavor right from the start, even if not all areas in an organization are participating right away. Participating departments should define their own metadata with the entire organization in mind. They should solicit information from, and share it with, other departments to make sure that the metadata can be universally applied when the time comes.

Can you tell us about some of the content-related issues and challenges you’ve seen many organizations face, either on the development or the management side of things?

The most common content-related issue, and often the indicator that drives organizations to seek help in defining a unified content strategy, is the inability of either internal users of the content, or customers, to find the information they need. This manifests in many ways, including redundant content creation, increased costs due to inefficient content creation processes, and lost revenue due to customer dissatisfaction or content inconsistencies.

Organizations sometimes have a hard time getting buy-in from management, which is why they need to present a business case that demonstrates how these issues are affecting the company’s bottom line. IT and business need to work together to build a strong business case for a unified content strategy, and to select and implement the proper tools to support the solution. Too often, organizations have already committed to a particular tool or technology, without properly analyzing content-related business requirements ahead of time. It’s like going out and having a suit made without first taking your measurements.

In the near future, what kind of technology solutions do you see as having a powerful impact on content management in large organizations?

The move to adopt XML by many vendors has been the most significant breakthrough to date affecting content management, and will continue to benefit the content management industry moving forward, as new ways to apply its versatility to content-related issues are developed. In future, better native integration between authoring tools, content management systems and delivery systems are likely to emerge, as content management vendors gain a greater understanding of the issues and requirements of authors and publishers. Industry-specific content management solutions for areas such as health sciences and other regulated industries are being developed now.

Another area that vendors are beginning to address is the translation of content, and the integration of authoring, translation memory, content management and globalization management tools.

How do you see the Internet changing? Do you think it’s becoming a more proprietary and less open-source environment in terms of information, culture, commerce?

The Internet has been moving towards more proprietary and less open-source for years as vendors have created tools to assist people in creating and managing content on the web. As these tools have gained acceptance their proprietary focus has been overlaid on the Internet. I don’t see this changing though there will always be a role for open-source.

The Internet moved very rapidly from a tool for the academic and scientific community to the primary marketing and sales vehicle for many companies. This has dramatically changed the orientation of the Internet. However, it has continued to grow and support knowledge in more effective ways than traditional libraries and this will continue. Education, learning, knowledge, and knowledge sharing have changed for the good and it can only continue to grow.

Finally, do you have any other interesting books in progress or other projects you’d like to tell us about?

The Rockley Group is currently focusing on content/information modeling and metadata design for content reuse and management. Little or no literature exists on this topic and it is critical to the effective design of a unified content strategy. We are developing methodologies, techniques, and strategies in this area to optimize reuse, content structure and optimize the support for the models in authoring, content management, and delivery tools. We have recently developed workshops for our clients and the public on this topic. At some point in the future this may become a book.