Case Study - Autodesk - SharePoint Deployment

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of SharePoint deployment at Autodesk.

Autodesk is a software engineering company with worldwide presence. Autodesk worldwide marketing produced a lot of marketing assets. On many occasions, marketing produced assets which either was duplicate of what was already created in the past or assets that were not needed. Marketing assets were stored in a digital asset management system. This digital asset management system did not have a way to track marketing assets.

Marketing decided to use SharePoint which already was deployed at Autodesk as the tracking system for their marketing assets. This would be a tool where they would log an asset they would like to create and it would go through a workflow to vote, review, and approve this asset before it would be produced. After this asset was produced, it would be tracked in this system.

I started the project with identifying major stakeholders, gathering their requirements for this system, and writing use cases. It was decided to add BrightWork software in order to be able to create forms, reports, and templates in SharePoint. SharePoint features such as lists, workflows, discussion forums, blog were used for this project.

The project was approved by the company management. I created functional requirements which were submitted to IT. I have reviewed the document with the IT staff so that we would be in agreement about functional requirements and users’ needs.

A consulting company was identified for custom development of SharePoint and to integrate it with BrightWork. After this was done, I defined and created the information architecture, taxonomy, metadata based on users requirements. I created sites, lists, and workflows and set up information governance processes. I have also created advanced search and configured metadata for it. IT has configured the metadata and the crawler on the server level. IT has also set up all applications functions on the server.

Based on department managers’ decision, security permissions for documents were set up.

User acceptance testing of the system was performed. Users were satisfied with the system set up and functions and it was deployed. Information governance was set up from the very beginning. Group and individual training was conducted on ongoing basis.

After the SharePoint was deployed, users started tracking marketing assets creation in this system.

The project was a success. Company management and users were very cooperative in helping to make this project a success.

SharePoint deployment helped to increase efficiency and productivity of worldwide marketing and thus saved Autodesk cost because employees did not waste any time on recreating marketing assets that already exist. The system was adapted by multiple users.

Lessons learned

1. User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When you design and build the system based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point. They know that the system you are building will be what they need.

2. Top-down support is critical for the project success. Management support is a huge factor in employees' encouragement to use the system and in setting up and enforcing procedures for information governance.

3. Assurance of users from the very beginning that they will not be left alone with the system provided their cooperation.

4. User acceptance testing helped to encourage employees to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system.

5. Ongoing training after the system deployment made user adoption smooth.

Case Study - Wind River - Twiki Information Architecture

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of re-structuring content and information architecture of a content management system based on Twiki in Wind River.

Wind River is a software engineering company that used Twiki as their content management system. TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, content management system, a knowledge base, or a team portal.

Content organization and information architecture in Twiki were such that users had difficulty in finding information they were looking for. This situation made it difficult to find, re-use, and update content.

This also discouraged further adding of the new content and thus created areas where no documentation existed and the knowledge instead of being shared was being stored in personal computers. Storing the content in personal computers presented a risk of it being lost because it was not backed-up.

There was a lot of obsolete content because no content owners have been formally identified and no retention schedule has been set up. Collaborative work on the documents and projects was accomplished by users sending links to Twiki pages. Without these links it was very difficult to find information. There was no information governance in place and so content management processes were very sporadic.

The task was to re-organize the content organization and information architecture of the system and to set up information governance to solve these problems.

I strongly believe in user-centered design, so I performed the users study. I identified stakeholders within each Wind River team and created the questionnaire for collecting users' requirements for the system re-organization and the usability issues.

Based on these requirements, I re-organized the content structure and information architecture of the system. The major key to this re-organization was that the structure is very simple and intuitive. I made navigation very simple, created very intuitive labels, made sure that there is not too much information on one page and a user does not have to scroll down a very long page, that each page has a correct breadcrumb, and created taxonomy of webs (the building blocks of Twiki). Based on this taxonomy, I re-organized the location of documents. I also enhanced the system search.

For each content type, document owners were identified and retention schedule was set up with the function to flag the content that would reach an expiration date according to the retention schedule. This flag function would send an email notification to the content administrator that a certain document reached an expiration date. This alert allowed the content administrator to contact the document owner for the decision on what should be done with this document: review and update, move to an archive, or delete.

User acceptance testing of the system was performed. Users were satisfied with the system's new information architecture and indicated that it became much easier to find information.

The system with new content structure and information architecture was deployed.

Information governance was set up. Group and individual training was conducted on ongoing basis.

The project was a success. Company management and users were very cooperative in helping to make this project a success. It helped to increase efficiency and productivity and thus saved Wind River cost because employees did not waste any time on searching for documents or recreating documents that already exist.

Lessons learned

1. User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When you design and build the system based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point. They know that the system you are building will be what they need.

2. Top-down support is critical for the project success. Management support is a huge factor in employees' encouragement to use the system and in setting up and enforcing procedures for information governance.

3. Assurance of users from the very beginning that they will not be left alone with the system provided their cooperation.

4. User acceptance testing helped to encourage employees to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system.

5. Ongoing training after the system deployment with the new content structure and information architecture made user adoption smooth.

Case Study - Applied Biosystems - Enabling Website Search

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of enabling website search in Applied Biosystems.

Applied Biosystems website included the search of the company products. There was a search field where a user would enter keywords hoping to retrieve the company products. However, this was not the case. Entering keywords in the search field was not retrieving any results.

My question for the company's webmaster was: what data source feeds this web site? I was told that there was a Lotus Notes database which contained products information and which fed the website and enables search. I asked to take a look at this database. When I looked at this database, I noticed a couple of metadata fields that were not populated: keywords and related terms.

I told the webmaster that this was the reason why company products were not retrievable on the website. This did not sound credible so I set out to prove it. I populated these two metadata fields in dozen of records and asked the webmaster to re-set the crawler. After this was done, those dozen products were retrievable from the company website. As the result, my diagnosis and solution proved to be correct.

I created a controlled vocabulary of terms and related terms with which records in this database should be indexed, i.e. entered into the keywords and related terms field. I also created a customized taxonomy to categorize company products on the web site and make them browsable through this database. I indexed all records in this database with terms from my controlled vocabulary. And so browsing and search of company products were enabled.

Lessons Learned

• Never underestimate the value of metadata. It is absolutely invaluable in enabling search.
• Metadata values should be consistent. If you decide to call a portable computer "laptop", you must continue to use this term in all your records. In order to maintain the consistency, create controlled vocabulary.
• Use related terms in enabling search.
• Provide two access points to any system: one is search, another is browse. When a user knows exactly what they are looking for, they are going to use the search. If they don't know what they are looking for, they are going to browse. Some time during browsing, they may switch to search and then back to browsing.
• Search is iterative and interactive process. Provide means for it to be such.

Case Study – Immersion Corporation - SharePoint Deployment

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I will describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of SharePoint deployment in the Immersion Corporation.

Immersion Corporation is an electronics company specializing in haptics. The company’s content was stored in multiple shared network drives, wiki systems, CVS systems, and personal computers. In addition, documents in hard format are being used because they are not available in electronic format. There is no unified place for storing and accessing content.

Spreading out content in multiple locations made it difficult to find, re-use, and update. This also discouraged further adding of the new content and thus created areas where no documentation existed and the knowledge instead of being shared was being stored in personal computers. Storing the content in personal computers presented a risk of it being lost because it was not backed-up.

Existing content storage systems did not meet users’ requirements. The existing content was not categorized optimally and therefore the browsing function was inefficient. There was no search mechanism to search shared network drives.

Wiki and CVS systems search function was ineffective because of either wrong metadata or its lack. All current content storage systems did not have version control and audit trails necessary to control documents changes. There were no workflows in these systems. It was not possible to set up optimal security permissions in these systems.

There was a lot of obsolete content because no content owners have been formally identified and no retention schedule has been set up. In addition current storage systems did not have functions that would flag the obsolete content.

Collaborative work on the documents and projects was accomplished by sending documents as an email attachment which was inefficient and time consuming. There were no functions for project management.

I performed the users study. I identified stakeholders within each Immersion team and created the questionnaire for collecting teams’ requirements for a content management system and the usability issues. I held meetings with all teams’ stakeholders, managers and individual contributors. In some cases, I held few meetings were with one team.

Since Immersion used Agile software for the document control purpose, CRM for its customers management, Oracle system for financial operations, I also held meetings with Agile and CRM stakeholders and users. During these meetings I asked team members about their existing methods of finding the information and collaborating on documents and projects.

All users unanimously stated that:

• the information was spread out among few places and that it should be in one place; 
• it was very difficult and took a long time to find the information; 
• users had to ask somebody where the information was if they could not find it; if this somebody was not available, they would either try to re-create the information or would give up and try to work without the information; 
• it would have been very helpful and made their job easier to have a content management system to manage documents and records and collaborate on projects and documents; 
• the system for managing documents should have optimal browse and search functions, version control, audit trails, workflows, and optimal security permissions; 
• content should be organized and consistent in its structure; 
• the system should have high-relevance search; obsolete documents are present and are not being updated and there are areas where no documents exist; 
• the content management system should be administered by a content manager to oversee the quality of the content and metadata, the content organization, and the system content functions.

Since the company has already acquired SharePoint, during these meetings I gave teams an overview of SharePoint features and benefits and the overview of SharePoint itself. I asked teams if they would use the system. Each team expressed an interest in using SharePoint as the tool for document management, records management, project management, collaboration, and business solutions. All teams agreed that SharePoint would make them more efficient and productive.

A representative within each team was identified to be the primary contact between their team and myself, and for the purpose of getting the feedback from their teams, collecting teams’ requirements, and determining usability issues. The questionnaire for collecting teams’ requirements for SharePoint and the usability study was distributed to teams. Responses to the questionnaire were submitted to me which along with meetings findings served as the base for the functional requirements for the CMS deployment.

Since teams expressed interest in using SharePoint, I recommended to the management to proceed with its deployment. The project was approved. I created functional requirements which were submitted to IT. I have reviewed the document with the IT staff so that we would be in agreement about functional requirements and users’ needs.

IT staff has brought in a SharePoint architect to help to install SharePoint hardware and the architecture. SharePoint was installed. After it was installed, Immersion IT and I started working on setting up information architecture, taxonomy, metadata, content functions, and search.

Based on stakeholders’ feedback, I defined and created the information architecture, taxonomy, metadata, and content types. A decision was made on how SharePoint would integrate with Agile software, Oracle system, CRM, etc. as well on defining document types that would be uploaded into each system.

Then I created sites, libraries, and lists. Metadata, workflows, and information management policies were set up for each content type. I have created advanced search and configured metadata for it. IT has configured the metadata and the crawler on the server level. IT has also set up all applications functions on the server.

Document owners for each document were identified and entered into metadata. Retention schedule was identified for each content type and three-state workflow was set up to flag the content that would reach an expiration date.

Upon the reaching the expiration date of a document, a document owner and me would get an email-alert from the system that this has reached an expiration date. This alert would allow the content administrator, in this case me, to contact the document owner for the decision on what should be done with this document: review and update, move to an archive, or delete.

Based on department managers’ decision, security permissions for documents were set up. The system was set up for content approval before it is published which provided assurance that documents are uploaded in the correct place and the correct metadata is populated. I was approving content before it was published. Procedures for information governance were defined and supported by the company management.

User acceptance testing of the system was performed. Users were satisfied with the system set up and functions and it was deployed. Information governance was set up from the very beginning. Group and individual training was conducted on ongoing basis.

After the SharePoint was deployed, users started uploading their documents into it. The plan was created for migrating content from network drives and other systems into SharePoint.

The project was a success. Company management and users were very cooperative in helping to make this project a success.

SharePoint deployment helped to increase efficiency and productivity and thus saved Immersion cost because employees did not waste any time on searching for documents or recreating documents that already exist. The system later was adapted by multiple users for multiple purposes.

Lessons learned

1. User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When you design and build the system based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point. They know that the system you are building will be what they need. 
2. Top-down support is critical for the project success. Management support is a huge factor in employees' encouragement to use the system and in setting up and enforcing procedures for information governance. 
3. Assurance of users from the very beginning that they will not be left alone with the system provided their cooperation. 
4. User acceptance testing helped to encourage employees to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system. 
5. Ongoing training after the system deployment made user adoption smooth.