Scope and approach of our work
There are different ways communication and collaboration projects can be run and I won’t detail them here, but, having briefly described the environment we work in (see previous article), I will introduce the scope and approach of our work so that you can figure out why we do things.
Understanding the need to share information, the diverging characteristics of communities and the many different natures of people we work with, our approach balances a global strategy with an acceptance and support of local or group initiatives and this, for the following reasons:
- some people are early adopters or have such specific needs that you cannot include them in the planning phase of your project
- technologies may be in place already or land in the company after an acquisition
- the knowledge assets community members handle may be a mix of official assets stored in corporate repositories and temporary assets stored in project workspaces
- there is always a need to communicate and collaborate beyond borders, even in such disparate environments
Before diving into more details let’s have a look at the following diagram that summarizes the way people access information:
It helps agreeing on a terminology and understanding where we can have an impact within our organization:
- for the reasons listed above, many of the vehicles are a given in our case; SharePoint was also a given, but due to the good relationship we have with our IT partners, we still can have an impact on the way it is deployed and configured
- the functions is really where we spend most of our time. Using the vehicles as a set of building blocks, we assemble or build functions that power the communities
- the resources are not in our hands, but we have a role to inform, educate, motivate and support people handling those
- the information is the responsibility of the knowledge workers
In practice, the following areas are where we produce most of our deliverables:
- interface with corporate tools and group workspaces
- maintenance and publication of a minimal common vocabulary
- aggregation and presentation of community specific assets
The next article will list the principles and techniques used to support our strategy before addressing more specific aspects.
