In working with a large firm on the East Coast - 40K users - I'm finding there are several common roadblocks to implementing a company-wide taxonomy. This company has the same problems that nearly every company I've worked with experiences several common problems.
Where to Start?
This firm doesn't know where to start - do they build out a taxonomy first? Build business requirements first? Develop collaboration first? Develop grass-roots support first?
In my mind, the first place to start is strong set of business requirements that outlines what you want the taxonomy effort to achieve. In every company I've worked with, this has been lacking. With the lacking of a clear outline of the problems that need to be resolved, it's tough to know what success looks like and even more difficult to gain champion and grassroots support. So, the place to start is to ensure you have clearly defined business requirements that management has approved and can (and will) support.
What else needs to happen?
At a minimum, you'll need to work towards these goals:
- Need to get a single-version of the truth by eliminating outdated or redundant data
- Need to tag information with meaningful data that is highly discriminative
- Need to train users to use the input and findability tools plus their metadata
- Need to change the culture to get everyone on the same page because this represents serious culture, business process and information management changes
- Need to develop document-type lifecycles that specifies the following:
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Document Type |
Content Owner |
Security Level |
Repository |
Recoverability |
Tool(s) |
Education |
Policies |
Metadata (Descriptors) |
Workflow |
Consuming
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Creation |
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Consumption |
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Retention |
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Archival |
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Disposition |
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Every company addresses these elements in a different way and in a different order, but essentially, you're connecting the following:
- How information goes into the system (Putability)
- How information comes out of the system (Findability)
- What tools are needed for both
- Taxonomies
- Document Life Cycles
Let me emphasize that organizing information in SharePoint is directly connected to organizing information in your organization. This is *always* a business process, information management question before it is a technology question.
I'll be doing seminars on how to organize information in SharePoint 2010 - my first one is on the Monday/Tuesday before Thanksgiving. If you're interested in attending - either in person or via Live Meeting, please contact me directly at Bill@ebacompanies.com.
Bill English, MVP
Mindsharp|Summit7|Best Practices
SharePoint 2010 Training