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Every SharePoint implementation requires the development of a taxonomy. You know you have to build one, but what does that process look like? In this session I present a case study wherein I guided a client through a taxonomy workshop. This approach, which borrows ideas from the field of Library Science, focuses on the importance of getting users to focus on a bottom-up, function-oriented approach to taxonomy.
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Taxonomy Development:
Lessons from a Librarian
Toronto SharePoint Business Users Group
Kate Wilson
21/08/2014
A bit about me
• Hi, I’m Kate Wilson – former librarian.
21/08/2014
(Not sure how I got here from Music
Librarian, but thrilled that I did!)
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• Graduate of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of
Information (iSchool)
• Information Management consultant for
NetDexterity
What I do
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Information Management Consultant
• Document management, records management, taxonomy, navigation, metadata,
usability, design, testing…
• Set people up to find what they need, when they need it!
About NetDexterity
• Toronto-based Microsoft Partner
• Deliver Enterprise Information Management solutions, mainly on apps
The Project
The Client
• Public library system for a large Canadian city
• About 2,000 end users across ~80 branches
• Existing intranet (html) and series of shared
drives
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The Challenge
• Implement SharePoint 2013
• Very tight timeline and budget
The Goal
Develop a Taxonomy
• A hierarchical representation of the organization’s knowledge domain.
• From the taxonomy we would develop:
• Site architecture
• Metadata schema
• Navigation
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Challenge: Produce a high-quality
product in a limited amount of time
So… now what?
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Interviews
Talk to individual users and stakeholders and learn what content they work with, how
best to organize it, and what site areas they’d like to see.
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Pros
• Stakeholder involvement means better buy-in to
the end product
X Cons
• Time consuming
• Output not hierarchical
Content Inventories
Create a spreadsheet containing all of the pages in
the organization’s existing intranet and/or shared
drive.
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Pros
• Good way to assess all existing content
• Hierarchical representation
X Cons
• Doesn’t take into account new areas the
organization may need
• Doesn’t really involve the client
Sketchboarding
Get stakeholders and subject matter experts together and ask them to
collaborate on a potential site architecture and workflows.
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Pros
• Collaborative, and some people really like
working on paper
X Cons
• Paper is hard to share and doesn’t lend itself to
easy iterations
• Once the sketchboard is complete, it has to be
transcribed into another format to be useful.
Card Sorting
Each business or knowledge area is written on a separate index card. End users
are recruited and asked to group ‘like’ things together into a hierarchy.
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Pros
• Organizes content into a hierarchy, which is the
outcome we wanted
• Get a sense for how users think
X Cons
• Users aren’t coming up with the cards
themselves – are they the right cards?
Conclusion
• Combine the best elements of all
methodologies into a workshop:
• Involve the client to gain buy-in
• Collaborative and iterative
•Output is hierarchical
• Considers existing content and future growth
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My Approach
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Workshop Concept
• A bottom-up approach to a function-oriented taxonomy.
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COLLECT
Gather information/
content types
1
ANALYZE
Identify broader
themes and topics
2
ORGANIZE
Map themes and
topics hierarchically
3
Participants
• The workshop would consist of:
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Project Team (8)Subject Matter
Experts (7)
Stakeholders representative of
different business areas.
End users and/or content
owners from each business area
(Some overlap between
the two groups)
Preparation
Two weeks before workshop:
• Invitations sent to Project Team and Subject Matter Experts
• Background material provided to participants
• Intro slide deck about what is a taxonomy, why we are creating one, and the general
outline of the workshop
• Participants assigned homework
• Asked to think about what kinds of information they work with and bring a list to the
workshop
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Preparation
How I prepared
• Prior to the workshop, I created a
content inventory of their shared
drives and intranet website
• This information was mainly to keep
in my ‘back pocket’
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I like to use Xmind
Workshop
(Approx 3 hours)
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Workshop
Introduction
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~30 minutes
• Began with quick introductions – first myself, then around the table
• Next, took the participants through the introductory slides
• Invite questions from participants
Workshop
1. Collect
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~30 minutes
• Asked participants to write on sticky notes the kind
of information they interact with on a day-to-day
basis, then put the sticky notes on the wall.
• This step was the quickest because the participants
had been asked to come up with their list in advance.Gather information/
content types
Workshop
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• Asked participants to group related information
together under subject headings, or topics/themes.
• The themes generally reflected how the information
was used (function)
• As group came up with headings I recorded them in
XMind
Identify broader
themes and topics
2. Analyze ~45 minutes
Workshop
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• Asked participants to arrange topics and themes into
hierarchical groupings.
• Participants found it difficult not to place the themes
into groups based on ownership – wanted to recreate
their org chart.
• This step done on XMind and projected from my
laptop. (Easier to move sections around.)
Map themes and
topics hierarchically
3. Organize ~60 minutes
Workshop Output
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After the Workshop
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Finalizing the Taxonomy
• Workshop provided the tools for taxonomy development
• Workshop participants met weekly for an hour to discuss and finalize
taxonomy
• Later, the meetings became about site structure, metadata, and
navigation.
• I attended each weekly meeting to provide guidance and oversight to
the process
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Lessons Learned
Biggest challenge
• Participants intuitively seem to want to group information by content owner.
What went well
• ‘Back pocket’ inventory of existing intranet proved useful.
• Client extremely satisfied with the result – high quality taxonomy created in
weeks
• Cost effective – consultant hours limited to prep work, workshop, and
weekly check-ins
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Success Factors
• Make sure that if a participant can’t make it, they send someone to fill in.
•Otherwise the ‘voice’ of a user group may be missing
• Bring a note-taker to capture comments and ideas from participants, and
to be an extra set of hands.
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