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July 21, 2006

Knowing When to Let Go!

Whenever I look at a collaborative environment, it becomes real clear if an information architect or someone with a little bit of training has been involved. Information has neither context nor logical flow of assimilation. Spaghetti IA is more like it. However, when we do get involved and establish a solid roadmap and game plan for the content, we need to know when to leave and let nature take its course. Here are a few signs that we, as information architects or metadata architects have stayed too long:

1. The number of modifications made to the environment comes to a slow halt. Once the IA is established then content begins to flow into the system by the various contributors and very little adjustments are required. In fact, adjustments could actually create negative impacts to the project.

2. The phone stops ringing. What we do is not rocket science and with the new collaborative solutions we can simply be educators where the business users do the actual information architecture. Defining fields, domain, and visual structures have been automated and if no one is calling for help, move on.

3. The Tipping Point has been reached. When a collaborative site has an abundant amount of information or users then we should be careful to make adjustments. For example, suppose we have a document library where adding the modified date field would produce some value for reporting. However, if the environment has 1,000 documents, are you going to ask the end user to back and update the field or implement on a go forward basis. More importantly, businesses operate on cycles and if the cycle is producing content don’t slow it down, let it flow.

4. We are at80%. We as architects seek perfection while the business wants progress. If we just had one more day we could add some much more value to the knowledge store. No, let the business run when they are satisfied.

The bottom line, there is an art to letting go and allowing the seeds you planted to grow.

Posted by Todd at July 21, 2006 5:42 PM