[thelist] Intranet: your 10 critical questions

Carleen Tracy carleen.tracy at b3interactive.com
Thu Nov 9 16:10:45 CST 2000


Jorah,
no doubt my #1 question is 'What is your objective'. If my clients cannot
tell me resoundly what it is they need to accomplish, there's almost no way
for me to develop a successful product for them. I make sure they are able
to answer without hesitation and if they can's I have them go away until
they can.

>From that objective statement I/we formulate goals which help us measure the
succes of the project. This is handy becasue it easily can become the bible
when scope-creep begins to happen (ugh!).

The absolute #2 question is 'Who is the target audience'. Not knowing your
role on the projects, this may be for a project manager, but a helpful
exercise is to develop personas of who you're targeting. We interview the
users (who have problems-but definetly not solutions, that's our job). One
primary persona which requires every one of their needs be met and 2-3 cast
of characters. When the people on your team start asking questions
like...'what if someone wants to [insert task]. You and your project
managers/engineers/designers can say, without hesitation, Tom [the primary
persona] doesn't need to do that so it's not in this version.

Hope that helps some
Carleen



> -----Original Message-----
> From: thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org
> [mailto:thelist-admin at lists.evolt.org]On Behalf Of Jorah Lavin
> Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 4:55 PM
> To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] Intranet: your 10 critical questions
>
>
> Gang
>
> I work as an intranet consultant inside a fairly large
> corporation (72,000
> employees)  We are going through a cost-cutting period and one of
> the "belt
> tightening" rules is... no more paper newsletters inside the
> company.  I'm
> expecting a sharp rise in the number of groups coming to my team for
> intranet sites or help switching from paper to PDF format newsletters.
>
> Tonight I'm writing a one or two page document to use as a "cheat
> sheet" so
> when I go into meetings with new internal clients to discuss their ideas
> for an intranet site, I don't miss any key ideas.
>
> Just for thoroughness, I'd like your ideas for your "Top (N) Critical
> Questions to Ask New Clients"  {where N is any small number}
>
> 1)      Some people will be coming to me who have no site yet.
> 2)      Some will have a site, but it won't be working right or isn't
> meeting their team's needs.
> 3)      Some will have a working site, and will be looking for a visual
> "sprucing up."
> 4)      Some will _think_ they need a site, but will actually
> need PDFs or
> other electronic outlets (for instance, Lotus Notes, or other email)
> 5)      Some won't actually need my services, but may in the future.
>
> I've got a bunch of ideas myself, but I suspect I've got blind spots from
> working alone for so long.
>
> Thanks in advance...
>
> =Jorah
>
>
>
>
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