cms governance: aligning your people

You can lead a horse to water…

CMS governance: Aligning people for success

1Toronto | Ottawa | Calgary | Regina | New York

…but you can’t

make him drink

Aligning people for governance success

Thank you for coming! (social media next door)

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Amanda Shiga

• NLC: a professional services company with core competencies in online strategy, large-scale web implementations and online marketing

• WCM consultant (Reddot, Sitecore, Sharepoint)

• Web strategy and business analysis

• @amandashiga

• http://www.nonlinear.ca/blog

non~linear creations (Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Regina, New York)

What is (CMS) governance?

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Ask 20 people, get 20 answers.

1. A set of policies, roles, responsibilities and processes to guide, direct and control how your CMS is used to accomplish business goals

2. A set of workflows and permissions implemented in your CMS

3. The authoritative administrative structures that setpolicy and standards for Web product management

Don’t forget why you implemented a CMS in the first place!

Common reasons

1. To remove the IT bottleneck

2. To empower distributed content authors to manage their own content

3. To enforce standards across your web properties

4. To automate processes for greater efficiency

5. To manage web content as a proper digital asset and your website as a proper channel

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A thought experiment

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The Problem

Two different

departments have critical

events happening at the

same time and both want

to be on the homepage.

There’s not enough room.

Who decides what goes

on the homepage?

8

The Problem

You are considering

changing the way you

label navigation on your

website.

Who is responsible for

looking at search

analytics to determine

the vocabulary your

visitors actually use?

9

The Problem

There is a clear business

case for a new faceted

search engine.

It will benefit almost every

group that produces

content in the

organization.

What budget does it come

from? Who authorizes the

purchase?

10

The Problem

The number of online

registrations has

dropped by 25%.

(Increasing registrations

is a key objective of the

website)

Who reacts?

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The Problem

A series of untrue, near-

slanderous blog posts are

made about your

organization and

retweeted.

Who is responsible for

knowing this is

happening?

Who decides how to

respond?

What can we do?

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Today, I hope to …

1. Draw a bigger circle around WCM governance that goes beyond workflows and permissions

2. Provide you some helpful examples for aligning the right people in the right place(s)

3. Offer some suggestions for the tough questions

What happens if you don’t put “good” governance in

place?• Messy, uncontrolled growth of content

• Organizational conflict

• Poor adoption and resistance to change

• Operational inefficiency

• Loss of credibility

• Risk of litigation

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Typical governance FAIL

• No senior champion

• Project is an IT-driven initiative

• Web team has limited budget and power

• No consideration for change management

• No plan or vision

• Assuming the technology will handle everything

• Greatest barrier to success = politics

• Greatest key to success = senior champion

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What types of governance models exist?

• Decentralized (common in larger orgs)• No single owner

• Driven by policies and guidelines

• Organic growth, sometimes leading to site sprawl

• Centralized (common in smaller orgs)• Single owner/department

• Bureaucratic

• Highly controlled

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What types of governance models exist?

• Collaborative• Executive champion

• Steering committee / council

• Decentralized content ownership

• Centralized platform

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A collaborative WCM governance model for a large, distributed organization

Executive sponsor

Web steering team

Web team

Content

authors

The executive team/sponsor

Roles and responsibilities

1. Defining the overall strategy and priorities for the website.

2. Allocation of funds

3. Ensuring that the right people are in the right positions for online success

4. Reviewing and approving brand guidelines

5. Sets high-level policies

6. Acting as a the final authority for resolving conflicts

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A committed sponsor

• Doesn’t just sign the cheque

• Takes responsibility for the project

• Wants to see the project succeed

• Is fully informed and educated on the project

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Some tips

• The business case should sell itself

• Education is key

• Provide the sponsor with ongoing status and goal updates

• Do not hide shortcomings

• Consider quick wins to show immediate value and maintain support

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The web steering team

Advice:the Internet Strategy Forum (2009)

1. The role of internal online strategist has shifted: more than 60% of such positions are within two levels of the CEO

2. The importance of the internet is growing in many organizations – the introduction of senior executive roles responsible for online execution

3. Recommendation: Create a separate Internet strategic management function (do not force into IT or marketing as they exist)

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The web steering team

Roles and responsibilities1. Resolve questions of conflicting priorities based on

objectives set by ES

2. Brand enforcement - has power to deny proposals

3. Define internal and external content; create policies on content lifecycle

4. Coordinate activities, reducing duplication

5. Decide how best to address new regulatory or legislative requirements

6. Review metrics and using these to drive decisions

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The web steering team

Committees and membership1. Break down role into multiple committees

reporting to the WST

2. Members may be VP-level or middle management – ensure a decisions are made in an effective and timely manner

3. Members should represent a healthy cross-section of departments with an interest in the website

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The web team

Roles and responsibilities

1. Undertake ongoing analysis of user behaviour and report on this behaviour to ES and WST

2. Content approval, workflow and permissions decisions

3. Provide training and support to content creators

4. Monitor and tune the site search engine

5. Implement search engine optimization tactics

6. Staying on the “cutting edge” as appropriate

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Knowledge half-life

• The half life of knowledge in a given field is how long it takes for half of industry current expertise to become irrelevant or incorrect

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Industry Knowledge Half-Life

Mechanical Engineering 20 years

Medicine 10 years

Traditional Marketing 7 years

Internet Marketing 3 years

Social Media Marketing 1 year or less

Content contributors

Roles and responsibilities

1. Creation and editing of content

2. Entry of content into WCM

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A collaborative WCM governance model for a large, distributed organization

Executive sponsor

Web steering team

Web team

Content

authors

Competencies for online success

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Technology

Strategy & Direction

Social MediaOutreach

Content Creation

Education &

Mentoring

Map competency tasks to teams

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Web team Web Steering Team

Executive Team

External expertise

Technology

Support of daily operations

X

New technology deployments

X

Business analysis X

Put that all in place.

• When you develop your workflows and permission granularity, you will benefit from clarity and effective conflict resolution.

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What about Sharepoint?

Sharepoint…talk about polarizing

• Context: An internal collaboration tool

• A massive cultural change• In 2010, a status quo persists: shared drives, email and

Excel

• Behaviours are not easy to change

• The big idea: no development required

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Why do so many Sharepoint implementations fail?

• Lack of Sharepoint technology understanding

• Lack of executive sponsorship

• Lack of proper planning

• Lack of user engagement

• Deployed as a custom web application

• Lack of roadmap definition

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Sharepoint dream team

• The executive sponsor remains crucial

• The steering team takes on some different responsibilities• Selling Sharepoint to the organization and finding

evangelists

• Approving how Sharepoint is implemented

• Final approval or rejection for all aspects of Sharepoint

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The Sharepoint steering team

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Helpful tips

1. Representation from different departments; consider enthusiasts and volunteers

2. Reconstructed on a quarterly basis (fresh people)

3. Permanent members have more control and should represent different functions as well as departments

4. IT members should be business-savvy, and business members should be IT-savvy; all should know OOTB

5. Chairman should be executive level

The balancing act

• People like to know what to do – guide them

• Too much governance – lack of adoption

• Too little governance - chaos

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Other suggestions

• Create a Sharepoint pilot first• Create a positive buzz about the user experience

• Run the pilot for an influential business group

• Identify and reward individual evangelists

• Be careful of permissions• With Sharepoint, your architecture must be carefully

planned

• Permissions propagate/inherit in a specific way

• Again, the underlying system always has an impact37

Advice from the trenches

Advice from the trenches

• Align your people BEFORE your implementation starts!• Before technical planning

• Before information architecture

• Maybe even before web strategy

• If you’ve already got a mess on your hands…• All the more reason. Decision-making structure should

be crystal clear when wading through a mess. 39

Advice from the trenches

• Prepare people for governance sessions• Use your information architecture

• When in doubt, keep it simple.

• Educate people on CMS concepts: workflow, permissions, publication and other content-related processes.

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The Colouring Exercise

Homepage

About Us

History

Philosophy

Careers

Products

Widget

Doodad

Thingy

Press Room

Press Releases

Videos

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More advice from the trenches

• The web is a distinct and unique medium – provide content authors adequate training and consider adding a content strategist to your team• What is a content strategist?

• Rachel Lovinger: A content strategist is a [role] with specialized focus on using words and data to create unambiguous content that supports meaningful, interactive experiences.

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How to encourage adoption

• Engage evangelists and spread the word

• Training – people fear the unknown

• Support structure

• Involve users as early as possible

• People will change if the change is worthwhile

• Restrict as much as possible, within reason

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Act it out

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Workshop – 20 minutes duration

1. Select some small object to represent a piece of content

2. Choose individuals or teams to represent ownership within the website

3. Act out a process from start to end, including all approval steps and exchanges of information

4. Repeat until your point is made

Sketch it out

Visual is powerful

1. Creating simple pictures is an incredibly powerful way to discover ideas and solve problems

2. Get everyone up to the whiteboard!

3. Very effective in sessions where team members sketched out their ideal homepage

45Credit: Dan Roam

Use some persuasion

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Human Behaviour 101

1. One of the best ways to get people to do something? Turn it into a game and add some competition. We just can’t resist.

2. 50 insights into human behaviour that can be applied not only to web design, but also to business processes.

3. Getmentalnotes.com (Stephen Anderson)

The $100 Game

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Activity: Around 20 minutes

1. You are provided with a list of priorities and $100 to ‘spend’.

2. Distribute the money across the priorities according to how important those features.

3. Explain and defend why you have divided your money in this way.

48

The Problem

You are considering

changing the way you

label navigation on your

website.

Who is responsible for

looking at search

analytics to determine

the vocabulary your

visitors actually use?

A good answer

• The web team is responsible for monitoring analytics and reporting findings to the web steering team.

49

50

The Problem

Two different

departments have critical

events happening at the

same time and both want

to be on the homepage.

There’s not enough room.

Who makes this decision?

A good answer

• The web steering team makes the call.• Does not need to be escalated to the executive team

unless absolutely necessary

51

52

The Problem

There is a clear business

case for a new faceted

search engine.

It will benefit almost every

group that produces

content in the

organization.

What budget does it come

from? Who authorizes the

purchase?

A good answer

• The executive team makes the funding decision and allocates budget as required.

53

54

The Problem

The number of online

registrations has

dropped by 25%.

(Increasing registrations

is a key objective of the

website)

Who reacts?

A good answer

• The executive team pays attention to this and imposes an appropriate strategy and reaction chain through the steering and web teams

55

56

The Problem

A series of untrue, near-

slanderous blog posts are

made about your

organization and

retweeted.

Who is responsible for

knowing this is

happening?

Who decides how to

respond?

A good answer

• Marketing and/or communications might take responsibility for this• Social media monitoring

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Evalu

ati

on

Netw

ork

Pip

elin

e

MonitoringUpon discovering a comment about the initiative, first determine the channel:

Social Media Response MatrixCreated by non~linear creations, December 2009

Active Channels- Twitter

- YouTube- Flickr

Neutral Channels

- Blogs- Open Forums

Closed Channels- Facebook- MySpace

- Closed Forums

Is this person in your network?

(Twitter follower, YouTube subscriber,

Flickr contact)

Check their stream. Do they post a lot

about related topics?

Invite them to connect

Y

N

Y

N

Actio

ns

Monitor(See Notes)

Is comment positive / neutral?

Let Stand(See Notes)

Concur, Add or Thank(See Notes)

Fix(See Notes)

Reach Out(See Notes)

Is it something you can respond to?

Is the comment off-topic for them or clearly just meant to

antagonize?

Is it a rage piece? Are they venting or ranting without a

cohesive argument?

Is there a factual error? Is the comment misguided but

rational?

Does the commenter have a specific concern or issue that

can be addressed?

Is it something you can otherwise respond to?

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

YN

N

N

N

N

N

N

Takeaways

• Invest in people alignment• It’s worth the time, effort and expense

• There are good and effective ways to structure everyone and everything for online success

• Form teams spanning traditional silos• IT should not drive CMS initiatives

• Treat Sharepoint as unique• Governance with some special tweaks

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Thank you!

Amanda Shiga

CMS consultant

Web strategy and business analysis

@amandashiga

http://www.nonlinear.ca/blog

non~linear creations

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