15.4. Buy or Rent The question remains: how does a company strike a balance between consultants and in-house staff? Let's begin with the outies. There are all sorts of reasons why companies hire consultants in general, and most of these can be applied to information architecture specifically.
Projects -
Companies often hire consultants to complete a project with a limited duration. This relates to the project/program distinction we just made. You don't want to hire a full-time, permanent employee for a six-month project. For this reason, companies should consider using consultants heavily (but not solely) to make that initial investment in an information architecture foundation or a major redesign.
Money and politics -
Because of the short-term nature of the investment, it's often easier to get a budget for consultants than for in-house staff. In addition, there's a tendency for managers within an organization to respect "objective expert advice" coming from outside the company much more than the "biased opinions" of people within the company. Given the new and insecure position of information architecture practices within many companies, "high-powered consultants" are often needed to establish internal credibility and launch the operation successfully.
Perspective -
Although they're never completely unbiased, consultants really can bring a fresh, outsider's perspective. This is particularly important when you're trying to get outside the organizational mindset and understand the needs and behavior of your users. Consultants can also draw upon the "best practices" they've seen at other companies, helping you learn from the successes and failures of others. On the other hand, there are some very good reasons why companies hire employees, and these too apply to information architects.
Programs -
For ongoing programs, it's typically more cost effective to hire full-time, permanent employees. You'll probably want to hire a staff to manage those fast-moving layers of information architecture (e.g., controlled vocabularies, secondary navigation structures). As web sites and intranets are increasingly recognized as mission-critical, the question will shift from "Do I hire an information architect?" to "How many do I hire, and what types of information architects do I need?"
Business context -
Over time, in-house information architects gain a rich understanding of the business context, which is a real advantage over consultants. Their deep knowledge of the strategy, customers, and culture of the organization can provide insight into needs and opportunities that are invisible to an outsider.
Relationships -
In-house information architects have the opportunity to build the long-term strategic relationships with employees, customers, and partners that are often needed to effect real change in a large organization. In large organizations, it's often best to begin with a mix of consultants and staff. You'll need the added firepower of consultants to work through the initial information architecture project. By carefully selecting a mix of consultants, you can use this as an opportunity to learn about your staffing requirements and the types of available skill sets. This will be helpful as you begin to transition from project to program and from consultants to staff. Of course, it's a good idea to maintain a consulting budget so that you have the ability to handle ad hoc projects and expose your in-house staff to fresh perspectives from time to time. In a smaller organization with only a handful of web-focused employees, you're less likely to be able to justify a full-time information architect. In such cases, our advice is to engage a professional consultant to develop a framework, and then make someone inside your organization responsible for the minimal amount of ongoing maintenance. |
