building information architecture teams in resource-challenged times
TRANSCRIPT
IBM Total Information Experience
Building effective information architecture (IA) teamsin resource-challenged times
Alyson RileySenior Content StrategistIBM Total Information ExperienceOffice of the IBM CIO(and my boss is in the audience)
@ak_rileylinkedin.com/in/alysonriley
6 May 2013STC Summit 2013—Happy 60th birthday, STC!
© IBM Corporation 2013. All Rights Reserved
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About Alyson
Technical communicator since 1995
Areas of expertise
Content strategy
Content metrics—the business value of content
Strategic information architecture (I organize my closets for fun)
Interaction design for content delivery vehicles, and interactive content
Information and product usability, from analysis through validation
User-centered processes for content strategy and scenario-driven information architecture
Senior Content Strategist on IBM’s corporate Total Information Experience team (in the IBM CIO organization)
Intercom columnist (with Andrea Ames) of The Strategic IA
@ak_rileylinkedin.com/in/alysonriley
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Just so you can’t say I didn’t warn you
Most of this presentation is going to be about:1. Metrics
2. Stakeholder management
Try not to be disappointed, OK?
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A little context-setting…Where do you live in this picture?
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Identify problems & opportunities(who cares?)
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You can stop listening after this chart, if you want.
“Nice to have” is dead.
If it's not business-critical, no one will care.
If you want to build a high-functioning IA team, you have to:
Prove the work is business-critical
Prove the business value of content
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WHY?
Look for the “Why?” behind the strategy
Change, challenge, or opportunity in the marketplace?
Innovation in the IT landscape?
Trend or sea-change in financial realities or global dynamics?
Why what matters
Strategic priorities vs. point-in-time tactics
Investment vs. legacy
Revenue generation vs. cost center
Use systems thinking to find opportunities to add value
Contribute to market plays, innovation, or customer requirements
Contribute to the priorities of the enterprise, business unit, or product
Prove that your results are something that customers want
Prove that your strategy supports business strategy
Toward business-critical
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Take a system-level look at the problem space
A generalized view of IBM’s product lifecycle
content
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Take a system-level look at your “users”
A layered view of “the client”
Are you thinking aboutyour clients and their needs
holistically?
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Take a system-level look at product performance
Ask SupportWhat are clients calling about? What’s the worst problem to fix? What trends do you see?
Ask SalesWhat does the product look like in real client environments? What’s the hardest part of your job? What do clients like least? How do we measure up against competition?
Ask Product managementWhat customer issues are you tracking? What’s happening in the market? What keeps you up at night?
Ask MarketingAre messages performing as expected in the marketplace? What are people saying? What are conversion rates like?your product
Ask UI designHow well do current offerings map to client requirements?
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Take a system-level look at content performance
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(another way of saying what the previous chart said)
See all this?Yeah, content makes this happen. How effective is your content?
Graphic lifted from Aiden Creative Digital Marketing Agency
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Content drives stuff that the business cares about.
Analyze the system to find business problems and business opportunities.
Make your case for what you want to accomplish.
And get ready to prove it.
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Proving it (tell the right story)
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First: Who?
Business peopleThis group funds us. We need them.We must stop trying to educate them and start speaking their language.We speak their language by proving value using business metrics that matter in the marketplace. Unless you can make a direct connection between your metrics and the metrics that drive business, you will fail.
Content peopleThis group influences our success.
We need them.
Many kinds of content people will help implement an information architecture.
Content people tend to reflect the values of where they live. Even “kindred spirits” can have widely different goals and metrics.
Identify common ground by speaking to what matters most to these people, too.
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A testWho are we speaking to when we talk about things like
this?
Site visitors
Page hits
Visitor location
Most popular pages
Least popular pages
Bounce rate
Time spent on page
Referrers
Search terms
Etc.
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Technical communicators need to tell a better story
Become a story-tellerDefine the right vision
Tell a compelling story that inspires people to buy into your vision.
Evolve from good stories to best storiesWhat makes a story true? Facts—things you can prove.
What makes a story compelling? It speaks to what matters most.
What matters most? Depends on your audience. Duh, right?
Prove value with metricsValue is in the eye of the beholder.
Know your beholders.
Use metrics that target actual decision-makers.
Figure out what your actual decision-makers value—their metrics for success.
Cold hard truth: Your actual decision-makers are probably business people—executives and others who hold the purse-strings.
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Sell your story to a business audience
The metrics we use to create good IA do not resonate with most outside our discipline:
Page hits resonate with us.
Sales leads resonate with business.
You need an IA’s intuition to know how content supports business metrics. Most business people don’t have that intuition.
Examplebusiness metrics:
Revenue streams
Sales leads
Cost per lead
Customer satisfaction
Customer loyalty
Return on investment (ROI)
Time to value
Market share
Mindshare
Examplecontent metrics:
Site visitors
Page hits
Visitor location
Most popular pages
Least popular pages
Bounce rate
Time spent on page
Referrers
Search terms
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But don’t neglect that content audience
Where do their goals align with yours? build bridges!
Where do their goals conflict with yours? build business cases!
Use metrics to craft a true story that:
Shows problems and opportunities that the content team cares about
Maps in high-priority ways to their goals for content
Diverges from their current goals in ways that would increase their value to sponsors and stakeholders
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Bridge the business world and the content world
Tie IA metrics to the metrics that make a difference in the market
Do the hard work: Research how content influences the metrics that are most important to the specific people you need for success.
Start your research with these hints:How does content speed user success and time-to-value?
direct link to customer value
How does content drive purchase decisions?
direct link to the revenue stream
How does content impact product quality?
direct link to customer loyalty
How does content influence customer satisfaction?
direct link to ROI
How does content shape clients’ perceptions of your company?
direct link to mindshare
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Metrics mapping: A simple example
Stakeholder
Business metrics
Content teams Content metrics
Marketing Executive
ROI Cost per lead Campaign
performance Conversion
metrics
Web team Social team Event team
Web traffic Click-throughs Likes and shares Conversions Collateral distributed Cost per unit produced
SalesExecutive
Viable leads Sales growth Product
performance
Sales enablement Education &
training Beta programs
Proofs of Concept (PoCs) to sale
Number of classes Beta program participants Cost per unit produced
SupportExecutive
Call volume Call length Customer sat. Ticket deflection
Web support team Call center team
Amount of web information produced
Volume of calls reduced Time-to-resolution reduced Cost per unit produced
DevelopmentExecutive
Dev cost Market share Lines of code Compliance Quality and test
Technical documentation team
Developers who publish whitepapers and case studies
Product community forum team
Lines of text, number of pages, etc.
Cost per unit produced Web traffic Number of forum participants Sentiment analysis
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Set business-savvy, metrics-based IA goals
Business metrics Sample IA metrics Sample IA goals
Purchase decisions
(revenue)
Reach—visits, etc. Engagement—
referrals, etc.
Contribute to revenue stream through referrals from technical content that become sales leads.
Product quality
(customer loyalty)
Reach—visits, etc. Engagement—
referrals, etc.
Contribute to product quality through by simplifying the amount of content in the user experience.
Customer satisfaction
(ROI)
Web traffic Direct feedback Ratings Shares (social)
Create high value content that speeds customer time to success.
Perceptions of company (mindshare)
Sentiment—nature of social dialogue, etc.
Direct feedback
Create high quality, highly usable content delivered in an elegant information experience.
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Telling a better story: An IBM example
Shameless ad:Watch for the May
issue of STC’s Intercom for my new article on
proving the business value of
content (co-authored with
Andrea Ames & Eileen Jones)
We’re learning to tell a better story for a business audience
We conducted a survey from with clients and prospective clients—here’s the hot-off-the-press data:
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Metrics—the most effective weapon in your arsenal
Problem: Metrics have gotten a bad rap
Numbers can be hard for word people
The right numbers are hard for everyone
Getting metrics to work for you requires a significant shift in thinking
Solution: Rethink metrics
Metrics are another form of audience analysis (who cares about what?)
Metrics are another form of usability testing (what works for whom?)
Motivation for change: Metrics are a powerful tool for getting what you want (and making sure you want the right things)
Metrics transform opinion into fact
Metrics remove emotion from analysis
Strategize with metrics: Use metrics at every phase
Beginning: identify opportunity, prove the strategy is right
Middle: show incremental progress, course-correct
End: prove value and earn investment for the future
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EthosYour authority, credibility, professionalism, and authenticity
PathosEmotional appeal, vivid imagery, creative envisioning, imagining
LogosLogic, data, clarity, evidence—either inductive (bottom-up) or deductive (top-down) reasoning
Sell: Tell a compelling story for each audience
Use metrics to: Speak to the analytical mind Tell the “black and white” part
of your strategy Articulate facts that prove that
your strategy is a good one
Use vision to: Speak to the heart Inspire people to believe Craft a narrative that
resonates and lingers long after you’ve left the room
Use expert communication to: Prove that you own the space Provide powerful evidence that
you are worthy of trust and investment
Build a network of influencers
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Organize for success(read: it takes a village)
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Manage your best political asset: Stakeholders
Whose agendas do you need to understand to be successful?
Which influencers can help you? What are their agendas?
Which influencers could block you? What are their agendas?
How can you help your influencers be successful?
How can you map your success to business priorities and metrics?
Manage your stakeholders intentionally:Their top concerns
Their metrics
The level of support you desire from them
What role they play (or you’d like them to play) in your work
The actions that you want them to take (and their priority)
The messages that you need to craft for them to enable the outcome you want
—Rachel ThompsonStakeholder Management:
Planning Stakeholder Communication. MindTools.
Web. 12 April 2013.
Free stakeholder management worksheet here: http://bit.ly/8UnUdj
“Stakeholder management is critical to the success of every
project in every organization … By engaging the right
people in the right way in your project, you can make a big difference to
its success...and to your career.”
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Maneuvering people is not necessarily evil
To make IA happen, you have to master politics
Think of it as a game—moving pieces on a board
You can’t touch the pieces directly to move them where you want them
You have to inspire them to move
You inspire them by figuring out what they care about and helping them succeed
It doesn’t have to be an evil game
Look for win-win alliances and opportunities
Discover and play to people’s strengths
Enjoy finding kindred spirits in the game—don’t get bogged down by pieces on the board that refuse to move
Enjoy the wins—be sure to share the rewards
Learn from the losses—keep your eye on the end game on not on emotional setbacks
Make smart compromises for the greater good—but remember who you are
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Build a community-based model for IA initiatives
Executive sponsor
Business unit sponsors
IA thought leaders from each domain or department
IA teams from each domain
or department
infrastructure gurus
graphic design
content marketing
product management
Network of supportive friends
interaction design
engineering
writers
editors
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Community-based model for IA teams
Define priorities
Which common metrics can we unite around?
Which metrics will we be measured against?
Which common metrics tell our story best?
Take first steps toward impact
What mission unites us?
What small, measurable projects could we do together to build relationships and demonstrate incremental progress?
How can we crawl—walk—run toward value?
Communicate constantly—up, down, across
Take interim measurements
Maintain sponsor interest
Course-correct as needed
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Don’t do it like this(embarrassing stories from the trenches)
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Story 1: In which I fail to use metrics intelligently
What I did
What I should have done
What I saw
What I should have seen
A content producer working on a certain type of content is troublesome:
Doesn’t get the big picture
Doesn’t understand IA
Is belligerent
Is territorial and siloed
Argued!
About content quality—redundancy, inconsistency
About an elegant user experience
Her success is measured differently than my success!
Her success metrics: increase volume of content; promote strong brand identity for her team
My success metrics: simplify the information experience; deliver a “one IBM” information experience
What’s behind her metrics? Find a way to map my metrics to hers and evolve her vision:
Increase volume of content Increase impact of content (reuse internally; visibility externally)
Promote strong brand identity for her team Prove team value
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Story 2: In which I fail to manage a problem personality
What I did
What I should have done
What I saw
What I should have seen
A writer on a “legacy” product wanted to keep writing books forever:
Doesn’t understand value of modular content
Doesn’t value reuse
Doesn’t get DITA
Got frustrated—argued, yet again!
Internal efficiency metrics
External experience metrics
Industry trends
She’s afraid!
Of failure with the new technology
Of losing her eminence and position as subject matter expert within her organization
Of losing her job
Give her a path to future security that resonates with her values:
We have these problems—current approaches don’t solve them!
We need a solution or we all fail I need your help You’re a thought leader We can’t do this without you
Start together on a small project to demonstrate value and earn trust.
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Story 3: In which I think “of course we should do this”
What I did
What I should have done
What I saw
What I should have seen
This is an obvious solution to an obvious problem. We must do this. And we are a happy family:
Same company
Same vision
Same goals
Ran meetings.
Kept agendas and minutes.
Wondered why I was the one doing all the work.
Got frustrated.
The problem wasn’t obvious.
The solution wasn’t obvious.
The team was giving me lip service.
The team wasn’t a team.
The sponsors weren’t engaged.
Socialize and test the shared-ness of the vision: Collaborate on a plan and
formalize buy-in (will you put your money where your mouth is?)
Disseminate responsibility (will you stand up and own this?)
Communicate progress & impact
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Story 4: In which I am too abstract
What I did
What I should have done
What I saw
What I should have seen
A team of strategic information architects from different business units within IBM who each:
See big picture
Think abstractly
Use models
Kept trying to explain (read: forged ahead blindly, not realizing that anything was wrong). But…
Noted lack of progress
Watched participation plummet
Felt awkward
Meeting conversations were weird:
I spent too much time explaining
The IAs discussed our purpose and work in ways that didn’t make sense.
Sponsors didn’t see the work:
The IAs aren’t socializing it
Realize that few people can start at the abstract level.
Find a small, measurable, concrete project to work on. Work together = learn together.
Generate team results—then work together to abstract out the key findings.
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And that’s all she wrote. Any questions?
thank you