Section 11.2. Strategies Under Attack


11.2. Strategies Under Attack

While we're on the topic of buy-in, it's worth discussing some critical issues that crop up again and again when developing information architecture strategies. It's not unusual for a hostile stakeholder within a client's organization to ask the following questions during an interview:

  • How can you develop an information architecture when we don't have a business strategy?

  • How can you develop an information architecture before we have the content in place?

These questions can stop the inexperienced information architect in his tracks, especially when they're asked by a Chief Information Officer or a Vice President for Business Strategy within a Fortune 500 corporation. It's at times like that when you wish you'd read one of those books on how to deal with difficult people or how to disappear into thin air.

Fortunately, the lack of a written business plan or a complete content repository does not mean you need to fold up your blueprints and go home. In all our years of consulting for Fortune 500 clients, we've never seen a business plan that was complete or up to date, and we've never seen a content collection that wouldn't undergo significant change within a twelve-month period.

The reality is that you're dealing with a classic chicken-and-egg problem. There are no clean answers to the questions:

  • What comes first, the business strategy or the information architecture?

  • What comes first, the content or the information architecture?

Business strategies, content collections, and information architectures don't exist in a vacuum, and they don't hatch from the egg fully formed. They co-evolve in a highly interactive manner.

Developing an information architecture strategy is a wonderful way to expose gaps in business strategies and content collections. The process forces people to make difficult choices that they've thus far managed to avoid. Seemingly simple questions about organization and labeling issues can often set off a ripple effect that impacts business strategy or content policy. For example:


Innocent question posed by information architect:

"In trying to design the hierarchy for this Consumers Energy web site, I'm having a really hard time creating a structure that accommodates the content of Consumers Energy and its parent company, CMS Energy. Are you sure we shouldn't provide two different hierarchies and separate the content?"


Long-term implication of asking this question:

This simple question started a discussion that led to a business decision to build two separate web sites, providing a unique online identity and unique content collections for the two organizations:

http://www.consumersenergy.com/
http://www.cmsenergy.com/

This decision has held up for more than 10 years. Go ahead and check the URLs.

There's a similar bidirectional relationship between business strategy and content policy. For example, a colleague of ours was involved in the information architecture design of the Australian Yellow Pages. The business strategy was focused on increasing revenues by introducing banner advertising. It soon became obvious that the content policy was a key factor in executing this strategy, and the strategy ultimately led to real success.

Ideally, the information architect should work directly with the business strategy and content policy teams, exploring and defining the relationships between these three critical areas. Just as the business strategists and content managers should be open to the possibility that the development of an information architecture strategy may expose gaps or introduce new opportunities in their areas, the information architect needs to remember (and remind others) that the information architecture strategy is not set in stone either. As interaction designers and programmers become involved in later phases of the project, their work may expose gaps and introduce opportunities for improving the information architecture as well.




Information Architecture for the World Wide Web
Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites
ISBN: 0596527349
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 194

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