About the BBC website

So what will 2012 bring us, here at BBC intranet HQ?

Well lots of organisational changes for a start. Changes at the (near) top of the IT organisation will impact on the Gateway team, and me personally. Whilst the final details are being sorted, it’s business as usual and we have clear plans stretching into the summer that will provide the team with new challenges, and incorporate exciting new opportunities to get more involved in activities that don’t usually fall under the remit of an intranet team.

In addition to continuing with intranet management and associated technical development, the team will be taking on the responsibility for the development of the BBC’s corporate internet activity. Some have already been done http://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/ with plenty more on the way.

Our approach, building on the successful implementation of intranet templates, means we will offer editorial teams a restricted number of  templates to use externally, to meet all their functional requirements, which will mean less money being spent on external design agencies, and ultimately save the BBC money. It’s a no brainer; why spend money trying to satisfy all the needs of everyone, when seven templates adequately meet the needs of the majority?

I’m in the process of clarifying the level of service we’ll be offering to the editorial folks, and we’ll be fully open for business in April 2012, whilst we ramp up our activities over the next couple of months.

So what are we going to be doing for the intranet? Plenty.

1. looking at what the Gateway homepage offers BBC users and making some suggestions to improve it even further
2. implementing improvements to our search engine
3. finalise version four of the intranet templates (which offers horizontal navigation, along the lines of the corporate sites) and make them available to publishers
4. assisting project teams in upgrade plans for existing technologies and agreeing the future role of the Gateway team
5. understand and manage the organisational changes to ensure no disruption to the current level of service/support and the Gateway team are clear what their roles and responsibilities are, and the business agrees and understands them.
6. manage the transition period to ensure additional corporate activities are successfully implemented with no impact on existing intranet support and development activities

So plenty to do, both internally and externally.

As you can see we have some wonderfully named systems in the BBC, which seemingly need to be tracked down pretty regularly by their users.

1. Creation of templates, used with the content management system to allow publishers to make use of a consistent approach and design and concentrate on the content, not site development. These will be inline with the BBC’s internet.
2. Fix the reported errors/bugs.
3. Research how people use the search engine and make improvements accordingly.
4. Look to see what additional functionality we can introduce using Sharepoint 2007.

• move further toward more effective “self service” for the publishing community. Beef up our on-line support materials and increase the range of “how to” videos online to further help and reduce calls/queries from the publishers.
• reduce further the number of intranet sites not managed by the enterprise content management system – delete those sites that aren’t being managed.
• improve the performance of the content management system. It’s running like a dog at times. Beef up the engine and pour more petrol in it. Not literally obviously.
• increase the number of existing sites that use the recently introduced templated approach which also includes improved measurement tools and the inclusion of the common Global Navigation Bar and standardised footer.
• widen the scope of the intranet development team to take on corporate internet activities. We’re planning on being fully “open for business” in the new financial year, and we’re currently adopting a similar business model for our development activity externally as we are internally; one content management system, a set of templates providing a wide range of functionality and clear ownership of content by editorial teams. This will reduce overall development and ongoing operational spend.
• analyse intranet survey results and recommend next set of deliverables to the business.
• understand and implement forthcoming organisational changes.

BBC Gateway homepage - 10 May 2011

There were a number of business reasons why we decided to redesign the BBC’s intranet homepage and start work on sorting out the rest of the intranet;

• Increase efficiency
• Promote simplicity
• Encourage collaboration
• Make it easier to do stuff

and move on from the previous homepage that had been knocking around in a couple of incarnations for the past six or so years.

Our strategy focussed on five broad areas;

• Pan-BBC governance
• Editorial leadership
• Technical development
• Content production
• Systems and tools

1. People generally like the new uncluttered design with it’s simplistic style.
2. Users want the opportunity to add their own links. This is something our testing didn’t throw up (or we didn’t appreciate the amount of people who had added their own links to the previous site) so we’ve now introduced new functionality that allows users to add their own links, whilst maintaining the list of popular default links that can also be used.
3. There are a bunch of errors that need to be fixed.

Our next steps include;

1. Creation of templates, used with the content management system to allow publishers to make use of a consistent approach and design and concentrate on the content, not site development. These will be inline with the BBC’s internet.
2. Fix the errors.
3. Research how people use the search engine and make improvements accordingly.
4. Look to see what additional functionality we can introduce using Sharepoint 2007.

Full details available here;  http://www.steptwo.com.au/iia

Hopefully see you on the winners podium shaking the champagne bottle!

As you can imagine it’s pretty full on here, so for now here’s a peek at the homepage and I’ll let you know what the headlines are later.

Before

Before; Gateway homepage 12 April 2011

After

After; New BBC Gateway homepage 13 April 2011

BBC Gateway homepage

So what’s been happening? Well loads actually. We go live with a redesigned Gateway homepage tomorrow at 8am, following lots of planning and activities behind the scenes. The result is very diifferent to what we currently have and this new design clearly meets three objectives;

• Communicate.

• Collaborate.

• Do stuff.

Now I could have provided you all with the extremely boring business objectives that we needed to meet, and were part of our business case and you can see them if you want, but these three sum them up. I don’t particularly like business bingo speak, so let’s not run unnecessary stuff up the flagpole and see what synergies emerge. Let’s keep it simple.

In addition we’ve done some content removal too. I have some impressive figures I could share, but won’t bore you with. Except maybe for one; we’ve reduced 78 glossaries to two. And that’s still one too many.

There are lots of other figures that I will keep to myself for the time being and use when the bosses ask how we’re getting on.

Now you’re probably wondering what the journey was to get to where we are, and what the end result looks like?

Well firstly we followed the established journey of research, design, refine, redesign, review and publish. Did we spend enough time and thoroughness at each stage? Probably not.  But you know what? It’s technology – if it isn’t right we can change it quickly enough.

What does the end result look like? Well I can’t show you that I’m afraid, not until after we’ve officially gone live. Over the past few weeks we’ve been sharing what we plan to launch with any BBC employees who were interested our work in progress so I wouldn’t be surprised if its already available somewhere on the internet, but you will have to wait another few days to see it here.

Once we’ve gone live we will go through a review period and invite BBC users to tell us what they think, then agree what we will deliver as part of the next phase.

Simple really.

I’m a subscriber to the paper version (how quaint) of the magazine aimed at IT professionals “Information Age“. Most months I have a cursory glance at it and on rare occasions I may read an article if it interests me.

But I didn’t think I was the magazines primary demographic reader. I’m not technical, am not interested in the kilowattage of an IBM server stack or attending an Enterprise Architecture Summit in the Spring of 2011. But obviously there are people who are interested in these things and thank goodness they are, otherwise I wouldn’t have a job and Information Age wouldn’t have a readership.  But interestingly, Information Age’s editorial vision states ”….magazine for all executives,regardless of job title involved in the application of technology.” So that’s me then?

IT departments are considered to be dour places where tecchies scour screens looking for bugs in darkened rooms. This may well be the case in some companies but this is usually a stereotypical view bandied around by some people who have seen “The IT Crowd”; like me. But this isn’t fair.

The technical people I know are intelligent professionals who know their stuff, live ordinary lives and merely choose to spend their work time doing technical things that are simply beyond me. And that’s the way it should be. I shouldn’t need to understand the intricacies of how networks work. They should just work. Network managers? You do your gig and I’ll do mine; without each other we’d be lost. Sorted.

But, and it’s a BIG but……very few companies these days have no IT presence, so it’s vital the people responsible for IT solutions are fully aware of why a business does what it does and more importantly how it goes about doing it. It’s also just as important that the business managers also understand how IT helps achieve the aims of the company.

Whilst this is the nirvana a company can aim toward, the reality is usually very different. As I said at the start of this piece, work gets in the way; and we normally get judged on whether we actually deliver our objectives. It’s normally unusual to be judged on how we’ve actually gone about doing so and stating “after spending three days, I learned how finance balance the books and we need to reduce IT spend” doesn’t garner brownie points at appraisal time. Well not in my experience anyway. Unless your appraisal system acknowledges your behaviour and you receive recognition (or otherwise) for how you go about achieving what you achieve, IT folks behaviour won’t change. We’ll just continue to blindly deliver what we think is right irrespective of what the business needs actually are.

I have a reputation for challenging existing behaviour, which includes my own. I also have a reputation for trying to simplify things. I’ve lost count of the amount of responses I’ve received from IT folks to a suggestion that I didn’t consider to be particularly radical, and which will ultimately benefit the business, which were along the lines of surprise, denial or just plainly ignored seemingly because they’re “off the wall”, like the most recent example which includes implementing a common approach to delivering internet (yes, not “intranet”. I now have additional  responsibilities for the BBC’s corporate internet and they offer similar opportunities to rationalise our approach even further) development solutions which will reduce overall spend on both design activities and ongoing daily support. My stakeholder stated that she was very supportive of such an approach but also said  ”we’re different to the rest of the business, so have different needs.” Errr, no you aren’t and no you don’t.

Some people seem to enjoy hanging onto outdated systems to meet localised needs, with little thought to pan company requirements, encumbered by bureaucratic processes that simply don’t meet the needs of the user and therefore hinder the business’ objectives. This is an outdated view. A very outdated view.

All companies should ensure at least one of each of their employees’ objectives, and against which they should all be measured, should include innovation, which will improve a business’ success rate. The innovative ideas don’t necessarily need to be big or particularly ground breaking (though if they are then great) but they should demonstrate how things will be “better” as a result of delivering them, and they should clearly demonstrate how they contribute to a business’ success.  And managers should have an additional objective to make sure their people meet this objective. This doesn’t mean it needs to be an onerous bureaucratic process, but it should encourage employees to think differently. The best ideas come from opportunities that break the established model.

People should be acknowledged for innovation, taking measured risks, challenging the status quo and implementing change (no matter how small). If they choose not to, then they should should be mandated to contribute or encouraged to go and work elsewhere. Maybe for themselves, and then they would understand how important change is.

http://www.information-age.com/

Whilst there is nothing like meeting people in person and sharing war stories and experiences man to man/woman the current trend for attendees to tweet during the event means that perhaps we won’t all need to turn up en masse any more?

A recent example includes the Intra event in Scandinavia. A number of my former colleagues, plus folks I’ve met during my intranet travels, were either presenting or ensconsed in the audience tweeting away outlining highlights. And the presenters did similar afterwards. Its amazing what you can pick up in messages of 140 charcters or less. I prefer the less is more approach.

Add to this the fact that videos of sessions are readily available and access to the slideshows aren’t hard to come by then I think I’ve already gleaned enough information to warrant my non attendence. I don’t feel I’ve missed out too much. I can also ring people to fill in the gaps.

And when the use of video conferencing and true collaborative systems like webinars become more widely used (I do wish my IT would catch up) then we can all join in from the comfort of our own desks. This is regularly demonstrated with the IBF’s monthly "Intranet Live" virtual sessions of which I’ve co-hosted a few. .

I suppose it’s ultimately going to be determined by human behaviour. We’re social creatures who need to be with others. So whilst new approaches have their place. hopefully they won’t fully replace face to face conferences.

After all having a post virtual conference ginger ale on your own isn’t much fun.
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