Section 19.6. Timing Is Everything: A Phased Rollout
19.6. Timing Is Everything: A Phased RolloutEIA efforts are often tripped up by efforts to work with everyone and to do so all at once. Obviously, this is a recipe for disaster, but what's the alternative? It's pretty simple, really: choose your battles wisely, and take your time. Here's our advice. 19.6.1. Identifying Potential ClientsYou don't want to work with all clients. Some are simply too stuck in "cowboy" mode, playing the rugged individualist to your information architecture communalist. Some are too busy to work with you. Some are too cautious when it comes to new things. Some would like to work with you but don't have the resources, or perhaps they don't have particularly valuable content. Some, frankly, just don't get this information architecture stuff, regardless of your best educational efforts. And don't forget: some will actually have a much more sophisticated understanding of information architecture than you do. In such a mixed environmentwith both ends of the evolutionary spectrum coexisting on the same floor of the corporationyou must accept the reality that you'll be working with only the few clients with whom success is immediately likely, and waiting for the others to catch up over time. Some clients shouldn't be using your information architecture at all; they may be better suited to managing the information that lives within their department. You need to figure out how to pull out that information and integrate it with other information. For example, HR data is probably never going to be something you have control over, but it is exposed through various interfaces (web, database, etc.). You can work with HR to extract the information you need and integrate it with your architecture, but you'll have to build a bridge to HR to keep this functioning. Your task is to integrate all these scenarios into an overall strategy, and accommodate the different needs and requirements in your information architecture. So who are the "right" clients? Once again, use the three-circle Venn diagram of information architecture to guide you. The right clients exhibit the following characteristics:
In your quest to find the best clients to work with, consider these issues as part of your market research and selection process. Also keep in mind that your initial round of projects is a marketing tool, providing models of your work and work style to longer-term potential clients. After your first pass at assessing who's out there, you might go a level deeper in your analysis. Using the list we devised earlier, create a checklist for your "sales" staff to use as they delve deeper into each business unit's needs. This will help to determine how "information architecture-ready" each business unit is, and to assess the market for your EIA unit's services. The following checklist addresses the services listed in Table 19-1.
Interestingly, this exercise is also beneficial in determining what each unit has to offer to centralization efforts. For example, you might learn that a far-flung, little-known unit has acquired an expensive license for a new search engine. Perhaps it can bring this tool to the table? Sharing license fees helps the unit, and the enterprise as a whole may benefit by using the technology at a lower cost. 19.6.2. Phasing in CentralizationOf course, the best potential client in Q3 of 2007 could be very different from the best in Q2 of 2009. If the previous section is about helping you identify the "low-hanging fruit" that is ready to be plucked right now, then this one is about being ready to catch the next batch as it ripens. There is a natural evolution toward greater centralization among the enterprise's business units. The modularization of information architecture services is the perfect way to tap this evolution because you can hook clients for basic "must-have" services right away, and sign them up for additional services over time. The idea is that today's basic-service clients will evolve into clients of higher-end services as their needs become more sophisticated and their aversion to centralization wanes. Strive for a plan that's built upon a "timed release" of your services throughout the enterprise. For example, your market research may allow you to come up with projections like those shown in the following table. This worksheet tracks the evolution of demand for more and more sophisticated services over time, allowing the EIA Unit to make a case for additional headcount.
A glimpse at future demand will help you allocate the EIA unit's resources more effectively, enabling you to develop a phased plan to approach each tier of potential clients over time and ensuring that the EIA unit's services are ready to meet the demand. The predictive power of this approach will give you a better idea of when to bring in outside specialists and other types of help. Perhaps most importantly, realistic projections of demand will be quite useful as you approach senior management for additional investment. Finally, phasing in modular services allows various business units to have differing levels of centralization. In other words, cavemen can coexist with the highly evolved folks down the hall. What might result is something like the following "snapshot" of the enterprise, where the three business units are at very different points on the spectrum of autonomy/centralization. A flexible framework supports the unique needs of each. The following table once again deals with the items in Table 19-1.
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EAN: 2147483647
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