Chapter 17. Change management and governance

Change is the one constant in business, because business has to change in order to stay competitive. Perhaps because small changes have become part of the daily business culture, they’re perceived as less problematic than larger changes.

Surprisingly though, small changes can add up and become significant over time. Unless those small changes are tracked and managed, over the medium-to-long term they can wreak havoc on an initially well-designed and implemented system. We need to govern them.

What is change management?

Change management is the process of communicating and managing change throughout the organization. Change has to be managed to ensure that all employees are aware of and comfortable with the changes. Lack of change management can result in resistance to the project involving the changes—and potential failure.

What is governance?

Put simply, governance is the process of managing change.

Based on a Greek word meaning “to steer,” governance is exactly that: steering or directing the content, the people who create it, and the systems that support it through both the day-to-day and long-term content lifecycles.

In order to be effective, governance must consider both the people and the systems involved. If proper governance of both of these facets is maintained, then the content governance will be much simpler.

You need to develop governance guidelines for every aspect of your unified content strategy:

• Content models

• Content

• Reuse

• Workflow

• Metadata

We suggest setting up a steering committee or governance board to set the initial conditions and then manage and maintain those conditions over time. The basic needs of such a group are similar whether they’re managing content or the “under the hood” stuff—the taxonomy and metadata.

Change management

Never underestimate the impact change will have on your organization. If you have change management personnel in-house, get them involved in your project as soon as you make the decision to adopt a unified content strategy. If you don’t have change management personnel, consider hiring consultants who specialize in change management. This section provides suggestions to help you effectively manage the change associated with a unified content strategy.

Identify the pain, issues, and consequences

People are unwilling to change unless there is a very good reason for that change and they can see the benefits. Identifying the benefits means first identifying the pain, issues, and consequences. What are the real issues facing your organization? What is the impact of not addressing these issues? Once you’ve identified your reasons for change, communicate your findings to everyone involved.

Reach out and listen

Reach out to people within the organization and listen to what they have to say about the issues and the solutions. Be sure to thank them for their input. When you’ve summarized their input, go back to them and verify that you understood them correctly. Then as you move into design, testing, and implementation, involve them and ask them to help you in determining if your design correctly addresses their concerns and needs. If you involve people early on, really listen to what they have to say, then show them that you’re addressing their requirements, they’ll be among your strongest supporters.

Communicate

Communication is critical to successful change. You need to communicate the reasons for change, your plan, and the project’s status. Projects that are developed under wraps are viewed with suspicion. Lack of communication results in anxiety and starts rumors. The longer that information is withheld, the more anxious people will become and the harder it will be to convince them of the need to adopt the change. Communicate as early in the project as possible and continue to communicate throughout.

Develop a communication plan to help keep everyone involved aware of what’s going on. But don’t make the all-too-common mistake of confusing a communication plan with communication. A communication plan must be effectively implemented and must involve full two-way communication to be truly useful.

What to communicate?

• Why change?

Frequently communication plans tell people only what’s happening and what they have to do; they don’t tell people why it has to be done. When people don’t understand the why they have a tendency to ignore or resist the change.

Use the results of your analysis, summarize your findings, and present your findings in a clear manner. Don’t play down the current issues or the dangers that face the organization; lay them on the table so people see the reasoning behind the change. Take care not to frighten people with the issues and dangers, but be honest in your presentation; they’ll appreciate the honesty and clarity. Emphasize that the current concerns are no one’s fault and that the change is possible with their help.

• The plan

Explain your plan, including an approximate timeline for implementation. This gives people an understanding of the scope and timeline for the project. Informal lunchtime sessions provide a nonthreatening atmosphere and allow people to ask questions. Informal does not mean a whiteboard session with food; it must be a truly informal session—a lunch with a discussion afterward is usually more effective.

• Ongoing status

Keep people up to date as the project progresses even if only specific groups are involved in the beginning. A newsletter is a good vehicle to communicate ongoing progress and answer commonly asked questions.

If your company culture is a positive one, a wiki or blog can be used rather than a more formal newsletter. This can give you instant feedback from the employees about what’s working, what’s not, and how the process could be improved.

• Successes

Ensure that you communicate the successes you’ve achieved. This will enable people to understand that it’s possible to achieve a unified content strategy.

• Problems

No project is without its problems. As you start to implement the unified content strategy in additional areas, point out the problems you encountered, how they were addressed, and how they’ll be avoided as you move forward. Admitting problems brings them into the open and ensures that people understand that problems are inevitable and solvable.

• How it will affect them

Let them know how the changes will affect them. Don’t tell them that there will be no changes to their daily routine or their methods of work. You know there will be and they know it too. Be up front and honest about the changes.

We talked about why the company needs to make the changes. Ask them about their own workload, their own pressures and problems. Show how making the changes to the existing process will not only help the company, but also improve their working conditions and processes.

In some companies, the system will require significantly different skills and mindset. Ensure that you know how the changes will affect each role in the company and that you will be able to explain the changes to the people in those roles.

Elicit the help of change agents

Communication will help people understand what’s going on and why, but it won’t necessarily convince them to participate. The best way to convince people about the value of a change is to have one of their own communicate the excitement and possibilities. To do this you need “change agents.” A change agent is someone who’s not necessarily part of the assigned implementation team but who will be a user of the new system and methodologies.

The best way to create change agents is to bring together a group of representative users who have shown an early understanding of the problems or who are open to change. Help them clearly understand the pain, issues, and dangers, and have them voice their own. Take them through a short content audit exercise to help them see the possibilities. Discuss their specific opportunities and the ways in which this change will apply to them. Discuss how they can share their learnings with others on their team. Make sure you address all their questions and concerns. When they have an understanding of why this change should happen and are excited about the change, they’ll begin to communicate this to others on their team, easing the transition to the unified content strategy. Make sure that you help the change agents prepare a consistent message to take back to their team. A consistent message reduces possible misinterpretations.

Get a champion

The broader the scope of your unified content strategy the more likely you are to have disagreement. A champion (someone high up enough in the organization to effect change) needs to endorse the cause and ensure that different content areas understand the need for change and buy into it. If a group resists the change despite having their concerns and questions addressed, the champion may have to insist on them adopting the change or make a change in personnel to facilitate adoption.

Overcoming resistance

Many of the challenges of a unified content strategy are common to any new process or system, while others are unique to a unified content strategy. The following are some of the more common challenges associated with a unified content strategy as well as suggestions for how to overcome them.

Not invented here

People find it hard to believe that content somebody else created could possibly meet their needs. After all it was written for a different purpose and channel, and the author couldn’t possibly know their customer/audience/requirements.

In some ways, this is true. If content is written for a different purpose, audience, or channel without considering how the content can be reused, it won’t work. However, content can be reused if it’s:

• Written according to models and structured writing guidelines

• Written in the form of building blocks so content can be selectively used as required

• Written using good writing principles

• Written without format in mind

In some cases the content can be reused identically; in other cases, it must be modified, resulting in derivative reuse. But, regardless of the type, reuse is possible.

So how do you convince people of that? The best solution is “seeing is believing.” Bring together different groups who create similar content and work through a mini-content audit exercise with them. It’s a good idea if you have an understanding of where reuse is possible and select appropriate materials in advance so the analysis can be rapid. Having different groups identify the potential areas of reuse is an eye-opener. Many people are unaware just how much content is reused or could be reused. Once they see the volume of potential reuse, they’re usually convinced that reuse is possible.

The channel issue may be more of a hurdle. Prepare for this one in advance. Create an example using some material that was written differently for different channels, but that could be written the same for all channels. Show the group the original materials. Show how the content could be written for multiple channels. Show them the content in each channel (for example, on paper, on the Web) using your current design templates.

We do it differently

It’s not unusual for different departments and different business units to have their own values and ways of doing things. Many organizations even encourage different parts of the organization to compete with one another. They may not talk to one another or cooperate.

In this case, the content coordinator needs to find a balance between similarity and diversity. The overall business needs must be identified and communicated to the different areas. They’re all in business together and the focus should be on their business competitors instead of on competition with other departments.

However, even when departments compete with one another, find out what their commonalities are and share them. Let each department or business unit focus on what is unique and optimize those unique qualities.

You might also consider adopting variations on the solution to meet the needs of different areas. For example, one area may use a full authoring tool, another area may use templates and forms, and yet another may use modified traditional authoring tools (refer to Chapter 20, “The role of content management”). This makes it easier for each area to author in a way that supports its processes.

It’s okay for processes to be different in different areas. As long as the result of these processes is the same—effective, reusable content—different areas can continue to follow different processes. It’s not necessary to create one unified process for the whole organization.

Loss of creativity

Authors often feel that they’ll lose their creativity if they’re forced to write structured content and write to models. First you need to identify what they consider creativity and what value is being added to the content through that creativity. Frequently, creativity is the work authors put into the layout rather into than the content. It’s true that in a unified content environment, authors no longer have creative control over format and layout. However, authors who enjoy layout and design may want to participate in the design of templates and stylesheets in addition to creating content.

For authors who enjoy the content creation process, point out that they can be more creative since they no longer have to worry about format and layout. Their creative efforts can be put into designing the most effective information products possible and ensuring that content is readable and usable.

Others welcome the structured content and models as these free them up to do what they do best—creating content—what some consider to be their “real” job.

For teams such as marketing, where unique design and layout are integral to the effectiveness of information products, consider providing authors with the ability to modify the stylesheets. Structure must remain the same so content can be reused, but give authors the flexibility to change the look and feel generated by their stylesheets and develop the materials to meet their customers’ needs. Alternatively, consider giving the authors the ability to pick from a selection of visual representations for components so they can specify to a certain extent the “look and feel” of the content by channel.

There are benefits, but this is too much work

Developing a unified content strategy is a lot of work. However, the work comes at the beginning, not throughout the content lifecycle. Once your strategy is implemented, the average author will have a reduced workload. When speaking with authors, don’t overemphasize the amount of work it takes to implement the strategy. Instead, emphasize what they’ll save by working this way, and how much time will be freed up when they don’t have to create everything from scratch.

For management, who will be concerned about the amount of work a unified strategy requires, emphasize that all new methods and systems require up-front work, but the investment is returned later in benefits and reduced costs.

If fewer people can do more, I may lose my job

Companies and departments never have enough time, money, or resources to do all the work they need to do. Less work in one area means more time and resources are available to do work in another. Rarely are jobs lost. More frequently, organizations reorganize the workload and pursue projects and initiatives that they didn’t have the time, money, or resources to do before. You can do more with the same resources.

Why some projects fail

Failure is always a possibility when organizations change the way they do business. These are some of the reasons projects fail or falter and some ways you can address these issues.

• Resistance to change

Failing to address people’s concerns during implementation can result in the project’s failure. This is addressed in detail above in “Overcoming resistance.”

• Failure to address both technical and nontechnical issues

Focusing on nontechnical issues alone may obscure the issues of technology. Yet focusing on only the technological issues may result in failing to realize the impact a unified content strategy will have on the organization, its culture, and its political processes. Ensure that you address all the issues, both technical and nontechnical.

• Failure to recognize that analysis and design take time

Implementing a unified content strategy and realizing the benefits will not happen overnight. It’s important to recognize that time must be spent up front to produce an efficient, flexible, and robust unified information architecture. Departments or business units that recognize the opportunities for a unified content strategy and spend the time to develop an effective one should be rewarded for their efforts.

• Lack of a champion

Starting a unified content strategy at the grassroots of an organization then gradually extending it to address the enterprise may only succeed in meeting the immediate needs. You need a champion to endorse your project and to make sure that different areas understand the need for unified content and buy into it.

• Biting off more than you can chew

Organizations that try to do it all at once may fail due to the complexities of the content, the technology, or the organizational issues. It’s more effective to develop the strategy in phases. Start with a prototype, implementing in one area, then move into other areas. Implementing in phases provides small-scale successes that allow developers and managers to build the necessary skills and confidence. And it provides you with the opportunity to work out the bugs in a small, controlled environment.

• Economic issues

Different departments or business units may operate as different cost centers. Reusing content could be a disincentive. You may need to develop a new way of identifying the cost of creating and maintaining reusable content that is fairly distributed across the organization.

• Cataloguing reusable components

It is hard to catalog (for example, add appropriate metadata) and retrieve reusable content across multiple business units or departments. Authors often find it hard to locate suitable reusable components outside their own area.

Employing systematic reuse can reduce this issue. Information architects who have a thorough understanding of the entire domain of content can also help through the effective categorization of content (metadata).

• Organizations lack core competencies

The organization may lack the core competencies necessary to design, create, and integrate reusable components. Implementing a unified content strategy means you should be thinking about content in a new way, and many in your organization may lack the skills to recognize the opportunities that unified content offers.

Key personnel should receive appropriate training. Where necessary, consider using consulting resources at the beginning of the project to help you get started. Develop the strategy in stages to ensure that appropriate skills are gained and lessons learned are implemented with the next phase of the project.

• Lack of communication

Lack of communication breeds rumor and resistance. It’s important to communicate what is happening, why it is happening, and what is going to happen to ensure that everyone is aware of the project. Change is not as great a shock when information is communicated over time.

But remember that communication is not one-way. If you restrict communication to one-way only—the company telling people how things will change without listening to their concerns or their suggestions—the project will have a significantly higher chance of failure.

• Failure to involve others

Often when teams are assigned, they go off and do their job on their own. Their results depend on how clearly they’ve identified the full scope of the project and its issues. To be successful, they must involve all the parties affected by the issues and the change.

Perform a thorough analysis to ensure that you understand the scope of the issues and goals, invite people to participate in the design and testing process, communicate how you’ve implemented their suggestions, and employ the people who have assisted in the process and are convinced of the value of the unified content strategy to act as change agents (see “Change management”).

• Relying on only one type of reuse

The most common form of reuse is manual reuse, which results in the lowest incidence of reuse because it puts the responsibility on the authors to decide to reuse content, then find the content they want to reuse. Alternatively, automatic reuse ensures that content is reused and reduces the onus on authors to know that reusable content exists, find it, and reuse it appropriately. However, authors may perceive automatic reuse as overly restrictive. Using a combination of reuse types provides the greatest results and the most flexibility.

• Project-by-project reuse

While it’s a good idea to start small and work in phases, it’s not a good idea to develop a unified content strategy on a project-by-project basis. This can lead to a lack of awareness about how content needs to be structured and modeled for optimum reuse, resulting in a lot of rework later on. You can implement project-by-project or area-to-area, but design for the entire scope of the unified content strategy.

• Selecting the wrong first project

Selecting the right first project to begin your unified content implementation is very important. Picking the wrong one can lead to failure. Don’t pick a mission-critical project with a very short deadline, because developing an effective unified content strategy takes time. You need the time to do it properly. You also need the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. The pressure to perform quickly may sabotage the development team’s desire to do it right. Pick a project that will show return on investment, but not one that’s a make-or-break proposition. You should also pick a project where content already exists but requires a major revision to meet current needs. The changes required for a unified content strategy will be less onerous if the content has to change anyway. Using existing content will also enable the analysts and architects to have a real rather than abstract example to work with.

• Reuse everything you can

Reusing content for the sake of reusing content or to show high levels of reuse may not be effective. You could compromise the quality and effectiveness of your materials. Reuse content only where appropriate and effective, and always ensure that the reuse won’t compromise the quality of your materials or make the reusable content difficult to create, find, and manage.

• No facility for change

Some organizations may implement their unified content strategy, then either fail to support ongoing change or discourage change. They do this to ensure the greatest use of the system and most effective implementation of the strategy, but situations change and models, processes, and even technology need to be revised. Ensure that there’s open communication between the authors and the business owners to enable your organization to adopt change when required and to respond to unique needs where appropriate.

• Failure to provide ongoing resources

Once a business case is in place, organizations fund additional resources to take the project from concept through implementation. But what they sometimes fail to do is budget and provide for ongoing resources. Management and oversight doesn’t end at implementation; it continues on an ongoing basis. There are a lot of shifts in people’s behaviors and best practice in a unified content strategy and without ongoing oversight people can backslide into their old ways, sometimes resulting in long-term failure. Over time new behaviors become habit, but it often takes years.

Content governance

Changes to content must be managed at the content level (writing), the structural level (models), and the reuse level.

Content guidelines

Content guidelines help direct the author in creating structured content. Structured writing guidelines should be managed just like editorial guidelines.

An editor should own the structured writing guidelines and ensure that they continue to reflect ongoing corporate authoring guidance. It’s preferable to include the authoring guidance in the structured authoring tool or guidelines. Then if the guidelines change, they’re automatically updated. Consider allowing authors the option of turning the guidelines off when they’re comfortable that they know the requirements but have the guidelines automatically turn back on again when a change occurs so that authors are immediately notified of changes.

Content models

Content models should be governed by the content strategist or the governance board. Consistent models are critical to content reuse and for supporting adaptive content. Changing the models arbitrarily will result in reduced or even full loss of automation. Work with the content creation teams to ensure that models remain consistent and are implemented consistently.

However, review necessary changes to the models on a regular basis to ensure that they continue to meet organizational needs, and develop new ones as required.

Reuse governance

A reuse strategy identifies what types of content will be reused and at what level of granularity, how they’ll be reused, and how to support authors in easily and effectively reusing content. Once you’ve defined your strategy, you need to establish rules to govern reuse.

Reuse governance identifies the processes and business rules associated with reuse. For example, what happens when an author creates content that’s approved? This content then becomes the source. Another author chooses to reuse the source content. They’re in the process of modifying it when a third author decides to reuse the source, and begins making changes to it. What do you do? Will there be two derivatives (variations)? What if a change is made to the source while the secondary authors are working on their content?

On the surface, it may sound like a lot of work to figure out these rules, but think about the state of your servers, file system, and content right now—they’re probably a mess! That’s one of the reasons you’re moving to a unified content strategy: to control your content. And if you work in a regulated industry, then controlling not just your documents, but also your content components, will be critical to regulatory compliance.

We know of customers who cost-justified the move to a unified content strategy using a risk-avoidance business case. Within one year of implementation, they were able to show how they managed to prevent a risk situation through governance of regulator-approved content (for example, prevention of a derivative version).

If your governance is designed into your unified content strategy from the beginning, it’s just one more change that authors adjust to rather than an imposition at a later date.

Business rules

You use business rules to govern your reuse. Business rules can be implemented in your content management system (CMS) and controlled by workflow or controlled by your staff (manually); however, it’s important that you develop the business rules before deciding how they’ll be implemented. Once you know what your business rules are, you can then determine how to implement them.

You need to ask yourself, “What happens when ...?” For example, Table 17.1 illustrates a few business rules associated with reuse.

Table 17.1. Sample business rules for governance.

Workflow governance

Workflow guides the content through its lifecycle, from design and creation all the way to publishing. A complete workflow will even include feedback loops from the customer to improve the quality of the next version of the content. So it’s no surprise that you can’t manage your workflow on an ad hoc basis. Like any part of the content creation process, it must be well managed.

This management involves a level of commitment similar to that needed for the taxonomy and metadata. It will require a small group of people who ensure that the workflow supports the business rules, who guide changes if the workflow doesn’t, and who change the workflow if the business requirements change.

The same governance board can manage the workflow as well. They tend to understand the content requirements, the business requirements, and the interrelationships between the different departments.

As with the changes to taxonomy and metadata, most of the changes to the workflow come in the early days of the system setup and testing. Once the system is up and running, there are usually very few changes to the workflow, so any additional work for the governance board members is very light.

Taxonomy and metadata governance

Taxonomy and metadata are the “under the hood” things that make your system work the way you want it to: smoothly and cleanly, without any fuss.

No matter how well a system is initially defined and implemented, small changes made over time can add up to trouble—that is, unless they’re properly managed. It’s not as though we want to forbid change. Your taxonomy and metadata must change. You’ll need to keep your structures, taxonomy, metadata, and relationships up to date. Product names change, products are retired, and new ones appear. Your business grows, either through natural growth or mergers. The market changes, and with those changes, the terms used in your taxonomy change.

And although those changes must be implemented by your information technology (IT) department, you don’t want them making the decisions on what to change and when. Likewise, you don’t want IT to make each and every change that anyone wants. If every change that any author or editor ever considered were implemented, the system would quickly break down. For all intents and purposes it would be as though no system had ever been designed and implemented. Suggestions for change must be examined, and that’s where a governance board comes in.

What do you need to manage?

A taxonomy identifies content, defines metadata, and manages the relationships between those pieces content and the metadata. It specifically manages the organization of information—how the system can help people find the information they need.

For example, a new series of glycemic index (GI) products might be planned for. It’s targeted at a particular demographic, for example, 30- to 40-year-olds, people who are just starting to be concerned about their health. They have a busy social and work life, and have spent years with a mobile phone in their hands.

But now they’re starting to notice that they can’t eat like they used to without being concerned about a bit of weight gain. They make jokes about it, but are willing to start making some changes to their lifestyle. However, one of the things that they’re not going to do is carry a book or list with them to check the GI values of their food. They do have a smartphone with them at all times though. Therefore the main product is a mobile app that allows them to compare the GI influence of foods, but it’s not just a list of foods and their GI numbers. It uses social media and gamificaton theory to make it more interesting for them to use. And background material will be created, including notes and tips geared to their previous requests for information. These notes and tips are pushed to them via social media and texts, not email or web page browsing.

In order to support those new products, the governance board will have to look at the existing metadata. Will it support the creation and management (and ePublishing) of the tips and notes? Has this target market been identified in the metadata, and can you tag information as being specific to that market? If so, do you need to go further? Should you set up a special tag that identifies content specifically created for this series of products?

There are many questions that need to be asked (and answered) to support the new product. The changes and additions must not only support the new product, they must not impede existing products. You might initially think that because this new series of products is aimed at a particular age market, all you need to do is identify the material with an existing tag—one that defines the same target market. This might cause a problem in the future, however, if the volume of the notes and tips swamps the CMS with small pieces of information applicable only to the new series and not to other products aimed at the same age group. A better decision might be to tag the new information with the series identifier, and allow the CMS to segment the information for initial search and retrieval.

We want to ensure that adding new information doesn’t make it harder to get access to what already exists.

Governance board

A governance board has a dual role. It must set up long-term strategic goals that reflect the business aims of the organization. On a day-to-day basis, the board must also manage and maintain the systems (content, taxonomy, and workflow) in such a way that it allows change but ensures that the approved changes strengthen and improve the organization’s goals. In some companies, the same people are involved in both roles; in others, it’s split between two different groups (with some overlap). No matter how it’s organized, there are some basic rules for setting up a governance board.

Who’s on the board?

Getting the size of the board right can be tricky. We’re often asked how big the board should be, and we usually answer “As big as necessary, but no bigger.” Because that’s accurate but not helpful, we usually have other suggestions.

First, we recommend that you keep it under ten people if possible. We’ve found that committees made up of more than ten rapidly become unwieldy. One wag once defined a committee of twelve as an animal with twelve stomachs and six brains. That’s not an animal you want to feed.

The goal is to have a representative from each group involved in creating, managing, and publishing the content. In addition, you’ll need to have some management or executive representation as well as representatives from IT or systems who’ll be able to tell you if a change someone wants is technically possible. Also don’t forget to bring in someone who can represent your customers. Depending on your organization, this could be marketing, sales, or training. It could also be someone who speaks to the customers on a regular basis, such as service or support.

How often does it meet?

How often the board meets changes over time. Initially, the board will probably meet quite often. In the first year, it will probably meet six to eight times, and in subsequent years, it will probably meet on a quarterly basis.

The high number of meetings in the first year serves a number of purposes. During that first year you’re likely to want to make a significant number of small but important changes. These are the types of things that you want to address quickly rather than drag out. This doesn’t mean that you can hold off on implementation decisions with the excuse, “We need to take this to the governance board, and it’s not scheduled to meet for two weeks.” The board is designed to make decisions, not delay them. If there’s an urgent decision to be taken, without which the implementation can’t take place, it’s imperative that that decision be taken, even if it requires a series of phone calls and quick consultations.

However, after that first flurry of implementation-level decisions—most of which tend to take place in the pilot, often in the first two or three months of the implementation—you can count on meeting every five to six weeks or so.

These regular meetings will help the governance board members become familiar with the processes of the board, with the types of decisions they will have to take, and with the board’s internal processes.

In the second year, fewer changes will be required, and most of them can probably be scheduled. For example, everyone will know that a new product will be released at the end of the summer. Marketing and sales will know its name and its prospective audience. Training will be working on new material to support the product. Writers, illustrators, and other content creators will be working on new materials as well. In order to support the new product, new product names will have to be created, links made between new and old products, and new audiences may have to be determined. None of these changes should be a surprise, so they can be planned for. If the product is a new information product, rather than a product that needs documentation, the same scheduled set of changes can apply. The publication date is set and all the changes required to support the publication can be determined backward from that date.

Not all industries operate on such a planned basis, of course. Some industries are in what can only be described as a state of churn. Mobile phone carriers, for example, must react much more quickly and often have to make changes within a few business days.

Most industries aren’t under the same type of pressure and have a few weeks to make most changes.

What happens at the meetings?

We strongly recommend that participants have all the information they need to make a decision on a change at least a week in advance of the governance board meeting. During the week prior to the meeting, they’re expected to do some homework. They need to learn about the suggested changes, understand how these changes will affect their department, and be ready to make recommendations to the rest of the board (accept/reject) when they meet.

Summary

It’s important to ensure that your content strategy is governed. You can’t expect it to work in the long term unless it’s properly managed and guided.

That governance starts even before the strategy is implemented. The change management sessions are crucial: during these sessions, you’ll talk to and work with employees to ensure that they understand the need for change, and learn about their concerns and needs. If everyone is on board with the changes, the chances of success improve greatly.

Once the strategy is implemented, there are two main focuses of governance: the content, and everything that supports it.

Changes to content must be managed at the content level (writing), at the structural level (models), and at the reuse level.

The supporting structure for the content must be governed as well. The taxonomy and metadata that allow authors to find content for reuse can’t be random. These must be maintained over the long term to remain useful. Changes must both enhance existing content and support new content and products.

It’s not possible to govern on an ad hoc basis. A structure must be put in place to ensure that changes are understood and that they have broad acceptance before they are implemented.

When we discussed workflow, we talked about the similarities of designing and creating content and designing and building a house. The analogy can be extended to the governance board: the board is like a combination architectural design review panel and building inspector. Together they ensure that the house is built as designed but they also have the expertise to make intelligent changes if circumstances change and another room is needed in the house. The architects and inspectors can make changes and ensure that the changes are safe, that the foundations can support the extra weight, and that the plumbing, heating, and electrical systems can be expanded to deal with the extra load.

Likewise, the governance board ensures that the basic systems are in place to support the creation, management, and publication of content. They also review requested changes to the content strategy or the system used to support the content to ensure that requested changes are effective and that the processes used to create the content are not adversely affected by the changes.