ErgonomiA.ca

I like conferences when people report and share real case experiences, a process they went through which is described and explained for you.

Walton Smith’s (@walton3) talk at yesterday’s Webcom 09 was one of those. He introduced us to the Hello.bah.com social network’s implementation process which took place about a year ago.

When I checked out the program schedule, I relaized thatEnterprise 2.0 is a topic I know less than Marketing 2.0 and UX Solutions 2.0 but I got out of the conference with a clear understanding of the key drivers of implementation success from the Booz Allen Hamilton’s case presented. Here are my notes directly typed on my Blackberry during Walton’s presentation.

INTRODUCTION: About BAH’s organizational context
A large consulting firm of 23000 employees + 5000 new to be hired this year + lots of partners, all geographically spreaded throughout the world…

STARTING POINT
Walton’s team tired with “Do U know?” emails…

Hi Walton,
“Do you know someone who’s got sharepoint expertise?”

SN PROJECT’S GOAL: To set up an open but secure environment to unlock the power of the organization, meaning: to agregate useful content back to folks which can be tied to one’s profile.

TECHNOLOGICAL CHOICE
Process: Walton’s team sat down with big vendors to check out their solutions
But they needed an agile platform and opted for open source solutions which could be tied to the different tools they were already using within BAH.

This choice clearly reveals a focus on the users, not forcing them to switch tools, but adding to what they were used to login to…

FOCUS #1: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Half of budget on change management, the transformational experience which requires internal buy in for new tools adoption.

• Train new employees on day one and transfer the skills to former ones with demos and hands-on activities for these are the ones which work best for improving adoption behaviors and the adoption rate.

• Don’t force usage upon folks but implement built-in intrinsic and extrinsic incentives through the choice of useful aggregating tools, search results with profile’s ranking based on participation, allow for peer evaluation and comments, and make sure employee assesment includes SN content contribution.

• Track adoption metrics and usage level statistics.

After one year: 50% of the company’s employees actively contribute to the SN, meaning they are hello.bah.com posters vs lurkers…

• Report back benefits to leadership!

ADOPTION 101
Before: BAH had a wiki that only a few used
Goal: to develop a day2day use of the SN
BAH first added a kind of LinkedIn app called Connexion to help people make connections… increasing the exchanging volume potential…and got more than 10000 profiles within 7 days
Key success factor: Ensure support within a 24h response cycle.

SHARING CONTENT: the key activity to unlock the power of the organization
To allow both unstructured collaboration with the wiki and structured collaboration with some sharepoint – from within and with external partners.

All employees at all levels can add and create content or community without hierarchy.

Particular case with employees of the Facebook gen: heavy users but would not add value to the system contributing, as if they did not have the intellectual capital to do so. Coaching sessions were set-up to train them and reverse the situation, transforming them into hello.bah.com champions.

FINAL KEYWORD: CONTENT AGGREGATION which can immediately go back to the community
Employee profile pre-filled with all info already known by the company to allow people to look for all employees with Sharepoint expertise for example…

Subscriptions to each and every content available via RSS or email alerts (piecemeal or group level).

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, I had the privilege of participating in the Webcom live and interviewed Walton Smith after his talk.

Also related to the topic, here is a link to the interview of Jean-Pierre Desbenoît who presented the recent pilot rollout of the intranet of the French Government Civil Aviation General Direction (DGAC) at Webcom 09.

Also, I want to let you know that all the Powerpoint presentations of this Webcom 09 edition will be available on their site within 10 days.

I am very glad to report that I enjoyed this year’s edition of the Enterprise 2.0 track at Webcom since it was not 100% the case unfortunaltely last year, as Andrew McAffee, the one that every one was expecting… left me a bit disappointed as I sadly wrote in my blog when I got home

I truly had the feeling Professor McAffee basically presented the key points from his article “Enterprise 2.0: the Dawn of Emergent Collaboration“, which is an excellent article but I had read it already since it was published two years before that Webcom edition he was presenting in 2006. At the time, the article’s integral text had been made available for free as a ‘classic’ for a short period of time in 2007 from MIT SMR.

Web 2.0 + Intranet: Connected Users

Un très bon article tout récent, datant de Mars 2008, écrit par Helen Day (Executive Director, Intranet Benchmarking Forum/IBF), et vu sur FUMSI, le super portail de tous les gens qui trouvent (F de FIND), utilisent (U de USE), gèrent (M de Manage) et partagent (S de Share) de l’information (I à la fin de FUMSI).

L’article sous-pèse le bienfondé d’intégrer des outils 2.0 à l’Intranet d’une entreprise, en s’appuyant sur le cas concret de la BT (British Telecom) pour illustrer. Il faut reconnaître que l’article aborde surtout le pour mais quand même aussi le contre…et quelques mises en garde tirées de l’expérience.

L’article se fonde sur le contenu d’une présentation donnée à la Online Information Conference en décembre 2007 à Londres (UK).

Voici l’amorce de l’article pour vous situer concrètement dans les enjeux soulevés par l’auteure:

Web 2.0 inside the firewall: worry or opportunity?

In the IBF research report ‘Social computing and Web 2.0 behind the firewall’, the author, Louise Ferguson, concluded that ‘Reports of the death of the traditional intranet have been greatly exaggerated, social software can mean traditional hierarchies are short-circuited, new voices and debate emerges, and there can even be visible dissent.’ She also asked ‘Are such changes welcomed by management?‘

Many of the managers involved in the research believed that, by deploying these tools ahead of their direct competitors, they had been able to pull ahead in knowledge management. Others warned that social software was a ‘disruptive innovation‘ which should only be attempted if an organization is willing to change the way it communicates with its workforce.

Chose promise chose dûe! Voici la présentation livrant les résultats du mémoire de maîtrise de Camille Grange. Cette communication s’est déroulée le 22 février 2008, dans le cadre des déjeuners-conférences du GreSI à HEC.

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Vous y trouverez d’excellentes références scientifiques sur l’utilisabilité (diapo 5), ainsi que la grille de mesure développée par Camille et couvrant de multiples indicateurs intrinsèques de succès d’un produit/service Web et pouvant servir/s’appliquer aux différentes étapes d’initiation, planification, production, ajustements et utilisation (diapo 20).

Encore un beau bravo et un gros merci à Camille pour cette importante contribution de fond à la pratique de l’ergonomie cognitive, et à laquelle, je dois dire, je suis bien fière d’avoir pu contribuer à titre d’experte en utilisabilité autant qu’à titre d’amie.

Enjoy!

Top 10 intranets

“Nielsen Norman Group has released a study entitled “Intranet Design Annual 2003: The 10 Best Intranets of the Year” that brings attention to design best practices in the intranet world. Don’t let the word “design” fool you, though; in this case, design goes beyond aesthetics and into intranet — employee-facing workspace or portal — usability which, if neglected, can cost millions in lost productivity.”

Quelques recommandations pratiques et efficaces pour assurer l’efficacité et le succès de votre Intranet par Shiv Singh qui nous rappelle que: “As an intranet designer, you have one key advantage over your web design counterparts: your users are your coworkers.” Bien que ce soit un site Internet régulier, le nouveau portail de l’APCHQ est entièrement alimenté par ses régionales selon le principe énoncé ci-dessus… site Web dont nous avons assuré l’ergonomie…;-)

Practical Strategies for Creating a Successful Intranet