Every project gives us an opportunity to learn and improve what we do. There are things that go well, things can improve and things we should stop doing. There will be different perspectives from people involved in the project and those who use the things the project creates.

Intranets projects can be complex because the often have:

• Many stakeholders
• Technical requirements
• Integrations
• Business process automation
• Content creation
• Diverse user communities
• Change management
• Project management
• And more!

Inducting the team

Intranet project teams often have a mix of people who are fully engaged in the project from end-to-end, and subject matter or functional experts who are engaged for part of the project. The project team can also have external people who may not have worked with this company previously.

Having an induction for ALL project team members will help lift the understanding of everyone by giving context. Why is this project important? What is the scope? What isn’t in scope? How much of your time is needed? When do we need it? What is Agile? What is Sprint Planning? Who will be using the Intranet? What are the roles and responsibilities for project team members? What are the key dates? Etc!

Content

Don’t underestimate the effort required to develop content for the Intranet. The business is often time poor and content creation will be low on the priority list. Having a role to focus on content creation for the project can help reduce the effort required from the business and help ensure content is consistent across the Intranet.

Locating correct versions of documents that will be published on the Intranet can also be a big job, but it is also very important. Having incorrect versions can create all sorts of problems.

Develop the process for creating new content and maintaining the existing content. Getting regular updates from the Leadership Team, human interest stories from across the business, events published, other company news and community content is essential for keeping everyone engaged.

Language

We often assume that others speak the same language as us. As IT professionals we often use acronyms or terminology that means something to us but is gibberish to normal humans. It is important that everyone in the team understands what we mean and that we don’t let tech-speak infiltrate the Intranet unless our end user community is understands.

Recent feedback from a project pointed out that people were not familiar with Agile and so there was confusion about the processes and rituals, especially from people who were engaged for small parts of the project. They needed to fit their sprint tasks around business as usual.

Testing

Testing is essential for ensuring a positive experience for the Intranet. There are some areas that can be challenging. Permissions can be difficult to test if their business processes that integrate with other applications or complex content security requirements.

Asking business users to test can also be challenging. Often, we are asking them to do something they haven’t done before and guidance is needed to get a good result. Having acceptance criteria and test plans will improve testing. Having a professional tester is even better.

Change Management

Getting people prepared for change as early as possible helps with the transition from the old world to the new world. Change management is often a skill that technical teams lack, they are focused on building and configuring the platform. Having a role focused on change management in the project team can help with focus.

Having a plan for after the launch is also important. Use the usage stats, solicit feedback, and look for old habits that have continued. Post launch adoption takes effort.

STOP

What you should you stop doing? This can be a difficult questions, but it is important. Perhaps you should consider not doing some of these things, and perhaps other stuff too:

• Delivering Intranets without input from the business stakeholders.
• Trying to do everything in at once
• Expecting people to understand your geek speak
• Expecting people to be engaged if you ‘just send out the link’ and ‘ make the browser default to the home page’.
• Asking people to do new things without enough guidance and support

There are many other things you could and should stop doing. What do other members of the team think?

Iterate and Improve

Having a process for capturing feedback and some capacity to deliver post go-live improvements allows the Intranet to be improved once people start using it.

Learn the lessons. What went well? What could improve? What should we stop doing? Write it down!

Make sure launch day isn’t the last day of the project!