Politics of terminology

One of the things that we get called in to help with is the set of governance policies and processes that are necessary to make taxonomy projects a success.
There are number of things that need to happen for organizations to be effective in this area:
1. Sponsorship: Someone with power and authority needs to understand the [...]

Technology before requirements

I have been presenting at several conferences in the past couple of weeks (10 sessions in two weeks) and I am still getting the same situation over and over again. I had an attendee in a workshop on a content management maturity model say: “I am not sure where to start. It [...]

“Just tell me the answer”: the challenge of stakeholder engagement

Recently, a client declined the opportunity to review some work we were doing. When we submitted the project, we did so with the caveat that the taxonomy needed to be validated and that we needed a half day from the subject matter experts.
The client said “no, we can’t do that - they don’t have [...]

Operationalizing a taxonomy

A number of clients and prospects have come to me with the same dilemma. They have been engaged in varying levels of taxonomy programs and have arrived at a point where they need to overcome a certain sticking point in their projects. They are wrestling with challenges around getting real benefit from their [...]

Keeping Projects on Track

Just last week, a colleague asked me to run down a few of my experiences about projects that go awry. Here are a handful that we have observed:
1. Inconsistent team participation - This is especially true of longer term projects. One of the worst things that can happen is to have team members turn [...]