Taxonomy Workshops November 8, 2010, 11:30-12:30 ET

1. Taxonomy WorkshopsNovember 8, 2010, 11:30-12:30 ET Rachel Sondag, Senior Associate Jill Tabuchi, Principal Analyst

2. Agenda • What is Taxonomy? • Concept and Configuration • Workshop Approach • Challenges • What’s Next?

3. What is a Taxonomy • Overall scheme for organizing content to solve a business problem: • Improve search. • Browse for content on an enterprise-wide portal. • Enable business users to syndicate content. • Provide the basis for content re-use.

4. Agenda • What is Taxonomy? • Concept and Configuration • Workshop Approach • Challenges • What’s Next?

5. Manual/Top-down Work with librarians and functionally- or subject-based individuals or Focus Groups Identify overall ontology and major categories of information Subdivide categories as necessary to build taxonomy Individual-driven; may entrench obsolete or arbitrary categories Automated/Bottom-up Identify overall ontology and major content collections Analyze content collections using automated textual analysis tools Reveal major and minor topics of information; build taxonomy based on the relationship of these topics Content-driven; may reveal new associations of information Taxonomy Building Health Education Finance HR News Finance

6. Agenda • What is Taxonomy? • Concept and Configuration • Workshop Approach • Challenges • What’s Next?

7. The Workshop Concept

8. Workshop Configuration

9. Primary Goals • Define taxonomy, metadata, and related terms consistently • Set expectations for long and challenging process: • Establish overall goals – create a “Starter Taxonomy” and initial metadata strategy to be used as a jumping-off point • Create a value statement Creating a value statement ensures all participants are on the same mission, and can describe and disseminate the project the same way

10. Business Case/Value Statement • Provide example of summary Business Case and Taxonomy Justification: • “We are constructing a business taxonomy to provide our users with an intuitive browse experience. Specifically, we want to construct a system that will allow both internal users (employees) and external users (customers) to navigate to find the latest product information, including sales reports. This will allow all users to access their core information faster, and with greater confidence. As a result, traffic on our website should increase by 40% and frequency of help desk calls should decrease by 20%.”

11. Business Case/Value Statement • Five components of a successful business case: • Description of the issue - what’s changing? • Description of the issue’s importance - why are we changing? • Description of the benefits of addressing the issue - what’s in it for me now? Later? • Description of the costs associated with the change - what is the cost/benefit analysis for me and the business? • Measures for success - how will we know the change is accomplished?

12. Audience • List all the potential audience (role) types for the taxonomy • For an external portal: • Employees • Channel Partners • Distributors • OEMs • Representatives • Consultants • Customers • OEMs • End Users • Business Partners • Public • Investors • Media • Analysts • For a public website: • Educators • Pre-Teen • Teen • Adult • Students • Pre-Teen • Teen • Adult • Businesses • Community Members • Media/Press • Investors • Policymakers • Activists

13. Verbs • Identify the “things we do” • Helps users move away from organizational lines • People have missions – the verbs align with the missions users need to accomplish / need for information Care for associates Build Design Profit Sell Manufacture Build Deliver Store Ship Support Manufacture Manufacture Design Purchase Sell Market Ship Ensure Safety Provide Security Test Quality Train Users Market Purchase Innovate Provide Safety Test Market Support Guarantee Train Use Buy Write Ship Manufacture Care for associates Design Support Manufacture Market Ship Ensure Safety Provide Security Learn Teach Protect Serve

14. Nouns • Identify the topics: Record all input, even repeats, for visual cognition! Customers Products Associates Plan Supply Chain Infrastructure Compliance Products Customers Finance Auditing Associates Knowledge Customers Safety Environment Profit Safety Training Employee Benefits Production Quality Products Sales Marketing Quality Control Dept Products People Safety Solutions Computers Supply Chain Sales Research Products Processes Technology Employees Research Safety Services Sales Marketing Safety Products Marketing Research Core Industries Training Teams Competitors Sales Employees Products Research Plant Knowledge Management Training

15. Nouns - Topics • Map topics

16. Nouns - Topics • Continue to map topics Employees Products Research Manufacturing Safety/health Sales/marketing Financials

17. The Starter Taxonomy • Employees • Products • Sales/Marketing • Financials • Safety/Health • Research • Manufacturing Process

18. Metadata Collection • Capture the non-topics on separate listing and then define them Forms Policies Procedures News Events Meeting Minutes Public Internal Users Students Business User Management HR Department Administration Sales/Marketing Legal Department Washington, DC U.K. New York Office London Office Location = Audience = Organizational = Document Types =

19. Agenda • What is Taxonomy? • Concept and Configuration • Workshop Approach • Challenges • What’s Next?

20. Lack of Understanding • The primary concepts and value of taxonomy and metadata are often misunderstood: • Managers, Designers, Architects • Content Publishers • End Users

21. Complexity • Organizations design overly complex taxonomies and metadata strategies: • Too deep and too wide • Too much jargon • Too many fields • Too many pick options • Too much variation • Entry forms are often overly complex or lengthy

22. Compliance • Regardless of training, education, threats, or enticements, many users will not provide effective Metadata • Even the “best” content contributors typically won’t exceed a certain effort threshold • Dilution Factor: The poor work of some devalues the good work of others

23. Resistance to Change • Users will be averse to moving away from their existing ways of storing and finding information • Organizational to Topical • Secure access to more Open access • Content owners will fear losing control of their content • Content Managers will fear losing their “role”

24. Agenda • What is Taxonomy? • Concept and Configuration • Workshop Approach • Challenges • What’s Next?

25. Follow-on Process • Consistently and repeatedly test progress using combination of card sorting exercises, focus groups, and usability surveys • Engage additional end users for validation and guidance • Hold additional workshops to refine and provide greater detail • Utilize focus groups for further validation and naming • Match with analytics, content analysis, and technologies as complexity increases

26. Taxonomy Development Process Identify Business Case

27. ¿Questions? Rachel Sondag, + 703-748-7071, rsondag@ppc.com Jill Tabuchi, + 703-748-7108, jtabuchi@ppc.com http://www.ppc.com

28. ASIST Taxonomy Webinar Series • Introduction to Business Taxonomies • November 5th 11:30am-12:30pm EST • Joseph Busch and Zach Wahl • Taxonomy Workshops • November 8th 11:30am-12:30pm EST • Rachel Sondag and Jill Tabuchi • Practical taxonomy Design • November 10th 11:30am-12:30pm EST • Jill Tabuchi and Joseph Busch • Taxonomy Governance and Maintenance • November 12th 11:30am-12:30pm EST • Nick Nylund and Joseph Busch

29. Summary • This session presented a proven methodology to leverage your own organization’s stakeholders and system end users to design taxonomies.  It detailed a practical approach to user-centered business taxonomy design that yields taxonomy designs that make sense to your users, while driving adoption and ensuring the ultimate usability of your designs.