An ocean is never the same body of water because it’s always moving changing, evaporating and being replenished by new rainwater and runoff. Likewise, Internet content is an ocean of information that with content that is evaporating almost as quickly as new content flows into it.

We’ve heard of the deep Web and the invisible Web, private or subscriber-based databases that are not accessible to indexing by public search engines (intentionally or unintentionally), but what about millions of links that are broken when content types or entire Web sites are removed from production? Or domain names that expire?

While we might not miss “Kyle’s Frat Party” site, what about information of value to journalists, researchers and academics? For online journal publishers and academic researchers who cite Internet content in the form of URLs, this is an especially troublesome issue. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

…a growing number of scientists and scholars who are nervous about their increasing reliance on a medium that is proving far more ephemeral than archival. In one recent study, one-fifth of the Internet addresses used in a Web-based high school science curriculum disappeared over 12 months. Another study, published in January, found that 40 percent to 50 percent of the URLs referenced in articles in two computing journals were inaccessible within four years.

ArchiveIt 2.0

One solution offered recently in a July 26, 2006 news release from The Internet Archive, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the Web and other digital archives, is the Archive-It 2.0 service, which allows the permanent capture of Web-based information for reference and archival purposes. Existing partners in this effort include the featured collections of the University of Toronto, Indiana University and North Carolina State Archives.

Archive-It 2.0 enables digital archivists, library and museum professionals to create more tailored, relevant and search-friendly collections of up to 10 million URLs based on regular Web crawls across selected websites. Through test crawls, subscribers may see what kind of web material would populate a certain collection before actually archiving them permanently. An optional paid feature within Archive-It 2.0, Archive-It Pro, allows subscribers to not only set caps on how many web documents are collected from a website over time, but also block the collection of materials from specific websites altogether. The digital collections, as a result, are focused and more easily managed, because irrelevant materials do not find their way into an institution’s archives.

Another issue is Web 2.0 sites, Ajax, Flash, and the increasing number of sites publishing information dynamically. Unlike static pages that can be archived as a hard document, dynamic pages feature content on demand that changes based on what information is requested from a database. Most blog sites offer Permalinks so search engines can index a permanent (or semi-permanent) record of journal entries, but as the Goddard Library Web Project discovered in a D-Lib Magazine article published in Nov 2004, the Web is becoming increasingly inaccessible for archival purposes:

We encountered several problems when performing the crawl on the increasingly complex scientific web sites. The most common problem resulted from the increasingly dynamic nature of those web sites. This includes content that is controlled by Javascript and Flash technologies, and dynamic content driven from database queries or content management systems. The crawling tool is unable to crawl a web page containing a search form that queries a database.

ISO Standards for publications

While librarians and Internet archivists try to address the issue of vanishing or inaccessible Internet content, Web site owners and content developers can play a part in helping libraries and archives document and preserve the Web. On Canada’s national Library and Archives site, there’s an excellent paper on Electronic Publishing published in 2001. While this was intended for Canadian publishers, the principles can be broadly applied to any electronic publishers on the Web. This matrix explains the scope of what the document means by electronic publishers.

Serial publications

If you publish an online journal, ezine or other serial publication online, applying for an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) is a way to assign “a unique code for identifying serial publications, such as periodicals, newspapers, annuals, journals and monographic series” (Canada’s ISSN) and “magazines, newspapers, annuals (such as reports, yearbooks, and directories), journals, memoirs, proceedings, transactions of societies, and monographic series” (the United States ISSN). For serials distributed on the Internet and World Wide Web, the ISSN should appear on the first screen of the item.

While publishers are not legally obliged to use an ISSN, the U.S. site lists the benefits of applying for an ISSN:

The ISSN should be as basic a part of a serial as the title. The advantages of using it are abundant and the more the number is used the more benefits will accrue.

• ISSN provides a useful and economical method of communication between publishers and suppliers, making trade distribution systems faster and more efficient.

• The ISSN results in accurate citing of serials by scholars, researchers, abstracters, and librarians.

• As a standard numeric identification code, the ISSN is eminently suitable for computer use in fulfilling the need for file update and linkage, retrieval, and transmittal of data.

• ISSN is used in libraries for identifying titles, ordering and checking in, and claiming serials.
  ISSN simplifies interlibrary loan systems and union catalog reporting and listing.

• The U.S. Postal Service uses the ISSN to regulate certain publications mailed at second-class and controlled circulation rates.

• The ISSN is an integral component of the journal article citation used to monitor payments to the Copyright Clearance Center Inc.

• All ISSN registrations are maintained in an international data base and are made available in the ISDS Register, a microfiche publication which is scheduled to cease in the near future, or in “ISSN Compact,” a CD-ROM. These products are described in a document maintained by the ISSN International Centre: ISSN products

Individual publications

For individual publications, publishers should apply for an ISBN number. International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) are 10-digit standard numbers for the unique identification of each edition of a book or other monographic publication (e.g. pamphlets, educational kits, etc.), as per this information on the Canadian ISBN site:

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a system of numerical identification for books, pamphlets, educational kits, microforms, CD-ROM and other digital and electronic publications. Assigning a unique number to each published title, provides that title with its own, unduplicated, internationally recognized identifier.

As content publishers, our sites become part of the ocean of content online. We have a moral obligation to our current and future users to ensure the content we create becomes part of the Internet’s official historical record, good and bad, of humankind.

Get archived! 7 Ways to Keep Your Content from Vanishing

Most Web publishers, including me, are guilty of breaking links or removing content and having readers email you to ask “What happened to that (article/news item/link/download) on your site?”, but here are some steps you can take to help keep your content online and accessible (assuming you want it to be so!)

1. Check your links! This is a no-brainer, but with all the content management, link verification software and other tools available to Web publishers, it’s still a stinky issue. You or your Web development staff should establish link-naming conventions (e.g. Wikipedia’s) to govern the rules of how links are named, which can be followed consistently whether they are being named manually or dynamically.

2. Archive your links. If you really need to remove a link that is still valid, but isn’t relevant/essential to your site anymore, consider creating a Link Archive page where you can move the links so they can still be indexed by search engines and found by your users. Otherwise, create a redirect for old links so they point to a message indicating they are no longer available, or to new pages/content.

3. Archive your old site(s). Redesigning your site? Replacing it with a new version that has new content. Consider leaving the old site on your server in a Historical Site Archive area. If you don’t want search engines to index it and return pages of outdated results to your users, try using a robots.txt file that will exclude the historical pages from spidering.

4. Let the Internet Archive do the work. Read How can I get my site included in the Archive on the Internet Archive’s site. It’s a blast from the past to see older versions of sites going back to the mid-90s on the Internet Archive, and users can link to these pages, too.

5. Let search engines archive your pages. Find out how to ensure that your site is search engine optimized and that pages are not being published in a way that will cause search engine spiders to exclude them from indexing. Search Engine Watch is an excellent resource for SEO, SearchTools.com has some useful information on indexing robots and spiders, and the all-important Google provides guidelines for Webmasters on how to make your site Google-friendly.

6. Open up your content. Mirroring your content on other sites is another strategy for keeping your content alive and accessible. By licencing your content through a Creative Commons licence and/or offering it for republication or repurposing on the Internet, you can help ensure that your content stays alive and accessible. For more information, visit the Open Content Alliance, Connexions, or the University of British Columbia’s innovative Public Knowledge Project.

7. Use Universal Design principles. Last but not least, using Universal Design principles to ensure accessibility to the broadest range of users. It’s not only good from a usability perspective, but also from an archiving perspective.

Garth A. Buchholz, BA, CUA, is a certified Internet business strategist, usability analyst, researcher and publisher at DigitalPractices.

1. The Web Strategy doesn’t follow the Business Strategy.

Whether you’re designing for a Fortune 1000 corporation, a SOHO business, a government agency or a non-profit, your organization has a direction and a purpose, and your Web strategy must reflect and support that purpose. Read The Chemistry of Web Strategy.

2. The Web Design doesn’t follow the Web Strategy.

Assuming your organization has taken the time and effort to develop a documented Web Strategy, your entire Web Design (or redesign) project must be aligned with the objectives of this strategy as it is aligned with your organization’s Business Strategy (see #1 above).

3. No one has developed a content strategy.

Among all the discussions about the site’s presentation design (graphic design), its tools and applications, and its navigational structure, has your Web Design team given any thought to developing a Content Strategy? If your team cannot clearly answers questions such as “How is all the site content being prioritized?” or “What is this content supposed to achieve for us? ” or “Who are the 2-3 target audiences for this content?” then you need to write a Content Strategy or a Content Requirements Plan.

4. Users are not consulted in advance about the Web Design.

Web analytics, surveys, focus groups, use cases, heuristic reviews — these are some of the tools of usability analysis. Often organizations will undertake a major Web Design or redesign project, then afterwards consult their users to try to confirm whether they did a good job designing the site. You can’t please everyone, but once you know how people want to use your site (task flow) and what content and applications are important to them, then you MUST consider these when developing your prototype Web Design.

5. Users are consulted too much about the Web Design.

Don’t be held hostage by user feedback or usability studies, either. When you continue to over-research what people want on your site, you can set up expectations on the part of your users that cannot be reasonably met. As well, you cannot possibly offer everything on your site that users want because the site has to align with your Web Strategy, which has to align with your Business Strategy. (See #1 again)

6. The Web Design is confused with “look and feel”, “colors” and “branding”.

Too often, early discussions about Web Design and redesign centre around “look and feel”. “How will our content fit the new design?” asks the marketing and communications staff. “Let’s not talk about Web Design yet,” say the developers. “Give us a few possible designs,” say the senior executives. If you are leading a Web Design project, one of your first tasks should be making the entire organization know that Web Design is not just about what the site will look like, but also how it will be constructed, how it will be used, and how it will be managed. Yes, branding is a part of Web Design, but it’s not all about branding, either.

7. The Web Design has no muscle.

Web sites that perform tasks for their users must have muscle to do it. That means not just search engines, payment processing, and other applications and databases that make the site work, but also the static content and how its information design helps users with the task of scanning, reading and interacting with content. Sites should be designed based on task analysis and task flow rather than by gathering heaps of content (focus on how it will be used to tell you what will be used).

8. The Web Design has no brain.

Web sites with muscle also have to have a brain that controls the muscle. The brain is the documented site architecture and interaction design — making the site logical and intuitive to most people through the application of best Web practices as well as a by thoroughly following how people want to use the site. The site’s critical navigation design has to be based on task flow so it will make sense to users.

9. The Web Design has no soul.

The soul of Web Design is the collective mass of human beings behind it that may hide behind the “Browser wall”, but nevertheless must imbue the site with humanity and human qualities. A Web Design has no soul if it doesn’t use the language of the marketplace. It will also have no soul if it does not provide ample means for users to contact the Web site’s owners and administrators. And a good Web Design also should have some images of the people who are behind that browser wall.

10. The Web Design is not scalable.

If a single generation of a Web Design cannot be sustained because it cannot accommodate new content and applications without distorting or mangling the original design, then it’s not scalable enough. A Web Design should allow for continuous improvement of the site, a kind of progressive evolution that allows for change as the rule, not the exception. While it’s common to implement minor site design changes through small variations, and to conduct major site redesign every couple of years or so, Web Designers should always be designing for the unforeseeable, the Black Swans, and should always design two years into the future. Not “what we are now,” but “what we will become.”

For more information on Web Design Strategy, contact Garth@DigitalPractices.com.

Granted, in a secured network environment, there are less unknown variables for Web metrics analysis than for Internet sites that can be accessed by anyone, from any browser in the world. Yet because of these assumptions, many corporate cultures still do not analyze Web metrics to help their intranets succeed. When organizations develop and support a metrics-driven intranet, they can understand better how their employees use the intranet, align it with corporate goals more effectively, and plan future content and services using metrics as part of the business case.

Corporate cultures may often resist gathering intranet metrics because of additional costs, lack of understanding or lack of expertise. Yet Web analytics can help organizations determine return on investment for each employee who uses an intranet site by providing figures on improved customer service, increased conversion rates (sales), reduction of paper costs, and improved productivity. To help promote a culture of intranet metrics within private and public sector organizations, the following scenarios illustrate how Web analytics can benefit intranet operations and planning.

Intranet Redesign Projects

Intranet redesigns are, by necessity, a collaborative multi-departmental effort that spans various internal interests within the organization. Competing objectives can lead to complex governance, strategy and content management issues for an organization, e.g. Who makes the final decisions about what kind of intranet we should have? Who owns the intranet and its content? Who is responsible for managing and updating content? Intranet analytics can help business decision makers prior to an intranet redesign as well as afterward, when steady state governance guidelines are in place to help the organization oversee the daily management of the site.

If an intranet is being redesigned, an intranet metrics analysis can inform business executives and stakeholders about how the intranet was being used in the past, such as what its most popular and well-visited pages and downloads were, and what were the peak business hours when employees were using the intranet the most. (This can be especially useful if the intranet supports customer service or client-related applications, and a spike in usage might indicate a staff reliance on the intranet to help them perform business functions.) When an intranet site is redesigned to improve its usability, Web sites can increase their desired metrics by up to 100% (Source: Jakob Nielsen, Return on Investment for Usability, 2003).

After the launch of a new intranet site, or after a major intranet redesign is implemented, it’s critical to the success of the project to be able to gather hard measurements to provide a counterweight or reality check against the subjective responses. A new intranet or redesigned intranet almost always attracts a lot of attention within an organization right after its go-live date, and often a fresh new site also garners praise from internal users who are excited about it and eager to use it. Thus, initial feedback gathered from surveys, polls, focus groups or other subjective evaluations may mislead the owners of the intranet into thinking that their project was an unqualified success. However, checking metrics such as usage patterns, clickthroughs, bail-out rates, length of sessions, top pages/documents and other criteria can provide a more balanced view and help stakeholders analyze what’s right – and even what’s wrong – about the new site.

The Online HR Office

The Human Resources department in any organization often owns the intranet or at least is one of its primary stakeholders. Many intranets also have an HR site for managers as well as an HR site for employees. Intranet analytics for these online HR “offices” are not only important to determine how many employees are using the HR site(s) and how often, but also to link key intranet metrics with training, retention and recruitment initiatives, to name a few.

For example, any online registration for courses or eLearning modules can be tracked through site metrics, and intranet analytics can tell HR management and training leaders whether there are corresponding numbers between the number page views and the number of actual registrations for courses. If page views are high but registrations are lower than expected, management will know that the site is doing its job but the courses themselves may not be drawing interest, for any variety of reasons. HR leaders can also survey employees in advance of curriculum planning efforts to determine which courses would receive the most uptake, and which courses should be dropped from the course calendar.

Employee retention and recruitment efforts can also be determined and reinforced through Intranet analytics. While employee retention or employee job satisfaction is often considered a “soft benefit” because it can’t be measured, intranet analytics provide a way to measure its impacts. An analysis of employee usage for the IBM intranet site showed that 80% of IBM employees access the intranet daily, 68% view it as crucial to their jobs, and 52% are more satisfied to be an IBM employee because of information available on the intranet (Source: Liam Cleaver, IBM, From Intranet to the On Demand Workplace, 2005).

Recruitment initiatives can also be analyzed. Providing new and younger employees with current technology, including a best practice intranet site, has been found to be an important incentive when recruiting. Intranet analytics can demonstrate the value of such incentives by tracking new hires by login ID and analyzing their intranet usage patterns. As well, activity on new content and applications can be reviewed to determine different usage patterns between veteran employees and new hires. New employees may themselves be interested in seeing overall site stats to give them an understanding of how the online community is using the site.

The Employee Community

The impact of the “Web 2.0″ movement on Web sites has run deep and wide through the Internet. While the concept of an intranet community has been promoted since the 1990s (e.g. Amy Jo Kim’s book, Community Building on the Web), the last few years have seen an increasing expectation on the part of users that sites should be built by an online community, for an online community.

Yet intranets cannot simply pay lip service to community-building. Organizations with intranets may want to build not only an overall sense of community for the site, but also use Web 2.0 functionality to create and measure sub-communities within each division, department or business unit. Blogs, message boards, forums, chat rooms, shared space for virtual project management, event calendars, classified ads and other community-builders not only generate content but valuable Web metrics. A survey of intranets found that the most important metrics they tracked were not just page views (71%) and unique users (79%), but also community posts (67%) and registrations (63%) (Source: Forum One Communications, Online Community Metrics, 2006).

Intranet analytics are especially important for building a model of community activity patterns. Ultimately, the purpose of community-building on an intranet is to advance specific business objectives, such as enhancing information sharing and knowledge management. By tracking patterns for topics, streams or threads on a blog or forum, for example, senior management can obtain valuable data on the nature of internal business discussions and employee activity relating to specific business issues and changes.

As well, some content management systems use intranet metrics to push the most frequently accessed content and/or the newest content to top level pages so users are always aware of which content has just been posted and which content pages are most popular. This can be especially useful on forums where topical discussions drive user-generated activity and content.

The Customer Service Toolkit

On the Internet, the most important metrics are related to conversion rates – sales, transactions processed, clickthroughs, customer service support requests and customer satisfaction analyses. On an intranet, however, customer service success can be measured by intranet metrics in terms of how effectively it can be used to support the business activities, such as the ones above, for the organization. Customer service support on the intranet can be achieved through knowledge management tools, decision-making support tools, user forums for customer service staff to share information and post solutions to problems, and customer relationship management systems, to name a few. All of these can generate hard numbers that can be interpreted through intranet analytics.

Existing or new systems can be measured to help determine staff efficiency gains and diagnose minor customer service issues before they escalate into serious problems. As well, intranet metrics can help determine softer benefits such as employee morale, consistency of information and communications and customer perception of internal processes, i.e. it seemed to be easy for the company’s customer service staff to answer questions/process a purchase/resolve an issue, therefore the company must be well-managed. A research report on employee portals states: “The Employee Portal may help your sales team respond quicker to customer queries. The customer perception of quick and reliable service may lead to increased sales. However, it may not be possible to attribute the exact increase in sales as a result of this initiative.” (Source: Tan Shong Ye and Thyag Venkatesan, Going Beyond ROI, CIO Asia, 2006).

Intranet metrics for customer service pages and applications can also be shared with staff, not as a way to focus on shortcomings or dismal numbers, but to help find solutions and identify successes.

Conclusions

Intranet metrics should be linked to business drivers as well as to targeted performance figures for the site. On intranets, organizations know specific variables that may not be as easily available to Internet sites – who the users are, the maximum number of users who will visit the site, the type of browser they will be using, and when usage rates will drop off entirely (after office hours). Given that some of these variables are fixed, it is reasonable for organizations to set targets for their intranet metrics based on business objectives. Intranets are a substantial internal investment.

The methodology for intranet analytics should be revisited and audited regularly to ensure that the metrics are not being misinterpreted, but overall most organizations can benefit from sound analytics practices for their intranet metrics. Increased automation and customization offered by Web metrics tools and intranet applications provide greater control and accuracy to the figures they generate. As well, intranet metrics should be strategically shared with all members of the organization, including management and staff, rather than just the Web team or I.T. department. An analytical understanding of how people use their intranet is the most important way business leaders can learn how to improve their intranet and its return on investment.

Originally article by Garth A. Buchholz published by the Web Analytics Association.

If Web development isn’t driven by an alignment of sustainable technology, user-driven content and business-driven goals, the corporate Web presence will either fail to meet your business goals, be troubled by expensive technology challenges or simply alienate your core users.

The strategic objectives of a solid Corporate Web Strategy are found at the confluence of:

1. Business and strategic goals: Does the Web site support and/or advance your core business objectives or the objectives of one of your strategic initiatives?

2. Targeted core users: Does your Web site attract, engage and retain the kind of users you want to attract? (e.g. for client support, conversion, marketing, etc). Is it providing the level of customer service they expect?  Do your Web analytics support these assumptions?

3. Enabling technology that is integrated, sustainable and scalable:  Are your technology infrastructure and IT support staff capable of delivering what you want to deliver online? Can the costs of IT development and maintenance be justified by what you’re achieving in objectives #1 and #2 above?

If all your Web objectives fall within the overlap of the three objectives above, your Corporate Web Strategy is sound because it’s meeting your technology requirements, satisfying your online clients, and above all, working in sync with your short-term and long-term business goals. 

Copyright 2007-2009 Garth A. Buchholz All Rights Reserved
For free reprint permission contact Garth@DigitalPractices.com

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