Addendum D: Building a Taxonomy

Introduction

A taxonomy is the name given to describe a controlled grouping of terms and language used to find and provide consistency within a specific subject field. It’s a living document that might never be considered finished because it is constantly evolving alongside of changes to business operations and functions. A good taxonomy should be flexible enough to adapt to any changes so it does not have to be re-created.

Through a taxonomy, organizations can provide their stakeholders (i.e., employees, investors, etc.) with a set of categories that are:

•  Common and support the aggregation of common information across the organization;

•  Comprehensive and thoroughly identify components of the subject field; and

•  Stable and help the comparative analysis of the subject field over time.

Development Methodology

Creating a taxonomy is a demanding task that requires the co-ordination of resources, tools, and processes to optimally implement it. In the sections to follow, the process of creating a taxonomy is performed in three stages as illustrated in Figure D.1.

Stage 1: Research & Assess

In this stage of the methodology, a team of key individuals is assembled to manage the entire development process. Once established, the team focuses on gathering information—throughout the organization—relevant to the taxonomy, the role it will have, and where there is existing information that can be consumed.

Figure D.1 Taxonomy development methodology.

Selecting a Team

Creating a taxonomy cannot be achieved successfully by a single individual. Rather, it requires an approach where key stakeholders with specific or specialized knowledge of the subject field must be involved. While the inclusion of team members can be based on the subject field in which the taxonomy is being developed, at a minimum, resources from the following teams should be included throughout the development process.

•  Information technology (IT) support staff has a good understanding of the current technology environments. These resources can provide the team with insight into planned technology changes, help to discover opportunities for other technology, or identify limitation that should be addressed.

•  Legal staff knows of current legal and litigation matters facing the organization and how they will impact the subject field.

•  Compliance staff can advise the team of current or potential regulatory impacts that must be considered for the subject field.

•  Records management staff has a good understanding of end-user computing practices and can advise on how to maintain good business practice by avoiding compliance gaps within the subject field.

Establish Its Role within the Organization

The incentive for an organization to create a taxonomy can be either tactical (i.e., provide guidance during daily operations) or strategic (i.e., contribute to improvement of operational efficiencies). Generally, a taxonomy is both a tool and an opportunity to establish a foundation for all activities relating to a specific subject field:

•  Tool: The taxonomy can be used as an incentive to address organizational objectives such as:

•  Improving efficiencies by making employees more effective at performing their duties

•  Protecting intellectual property by identifying assets and documenting where/how they interact

•  Providing a foundation for determining the subject field’s relevant components

•  Opportunity: The taxonomy can be used to assign responsibility and accountability for a subject field such as:

•  Developing a high expectation about roles and responsibilities

•  Creating a self-reinforcing sense of morale and assurance

Define Business Requirements and Value Proposition

At this stage of the development process, the team should hold meetings with different business lines—if the organization is large enough to have more than one business line—to determine what (if any) challenges exist that require the creation of a taxonomy. In preparation for these meetings, a survey should be used to initiate conversation in the subsequent meetings about subject fields that could benefit from a taxonomy.

First and foremost, the team must clearly articulate the strategy for how the taxonomy will function throughout the organization and the issues (i.e., legal, IT, compliance) it will address. In doing so, the survey can be designed to deal with these aspects using terms and language that are simple, direct, and translatable through the organization. As the survey is being built, each question included should be structured in this way so that the surveyed individual(s) are not led into a specific response. As an example, the question “What is the most challenging task facing your business line?” allows the reader to objectively identify any subject field they consider needs attention.

Approximately one to two weeks following the distribution of the survey, all responses should be collected. These responses should be thoroughly reviewed to get an appreciation of the subject fields that have elevated urgency for the creation of a taxonomy. From here, a prioritized list of subject fields can be drafted and used to prepare questions as part of the interviews with the surveyed individuals or various business lines.

Interviews are intended to serve two purposes, the first being a tool for gathering information to further develop the business requirements for the taxonomy and the second being an opportunity to educate on what value the taxonomy will bring to the organization. During these interviews, it is important that the interviewee be permitted to do most of the talking so that as much information as possible can be captured.

Having completed all interview sessions, the team should now combine all results and prepare a list, sorted by interviewee, of the challenges and concerns identified during the sessions. With the aggregated interview results, the team will have a clear and holistic perspective into the subject fields where that should be prioritized for creating a taxonomy. The prioritized listing should be reviewed with each interviewee to ensure they understand the findings and how they align with the organizational strategy.

Assess Existing Data

Input into the taxonomy should not have to be entirely recreated from scratch. For the most part, there is a good chance that there is existing information throughout the organization that can be used as source material for the taxonomy. Gathering relevant information can happen from such data sources as the survey and interview results or pre-existing documentation such as organizational polices documentation or IT system architectures.

After reviewing the compiled information, the team will have a clear indication of how prepared the organization is for the taxonomy. The gap between readiness expectations and completeness of the pre-existing materials will determine which business lines will have difficulty with implementing the taxonomy. Identifying the degree of readiness for each business line will allow the team to focus on getting additional clarity by conducting subsequent rounds of surveys and interviews.

Stage 2: Build & Implement

In this stage of the methodology, the team conducts a series of interviews and surveys with subject matter experts to gather more information necessary to build the taxonomy. Using the aggregated results, the hierarchical classification scheme is built, evaluated, and implemented throughout the organization.

Conduct Surveys and Interviews

Most of the content in the taxonomy will be drawn from surveying and interviewing people in business lines throughout the organization. Quite often, interviewing or surveying a group of individuals with a high-level understanding of how things should be done will be ineffective in gathering relevant information.

Alternatively, individuals with a detailed understanding of their job(s), or those who pay attention to detail, can bring more value to the creation of the taxonomy. The reality is that there are “go-to” people in the organization that can provide the best information for developing the taxonomy. This is because they are the best at describing what it is they do every day, what resources they need to do their job(s), and can directly identify any challenges or issues in performing their job(s).

At this point, there are plenty of source materials that can be drawn from to create the survey targeting the individuals who can provide the most value to creating the taxonomy. The process of surveying and interviewing is the organization’s best opportunity to educate and help business lines better understand the scope, value, and relevance of a taxonomy.

This round of surveys and interviews is designed so interviewees can further elaborate and provide greater details on the operations and functions they are involved in that are relevant to the taxonomy’s subject field. To facilitate the level of discussion held during the interview sessions, the team should consider distributing the survey beforehand to allow people additional time to review and absorb information such as the survey’s context, definitions, purpose of the project, and goals of the survey.

As interviews are completed and the associated surveys are received, the team must thoroughly review the collective results. This time around, the goal of reviewing results is to ensure the responses align with the business line interviews and survey so that the team can identify any unresolved challenges that stand in the way of completing the taxonomy. To do so, the team must ensure they have a complete view of the business line from the interviewee’s perspective which requires that, where needed, unfinished survey submissions must be returned for completion with an explanation of the deficiencies needing resolution.

Processing the aggregated results, the team will begin to realize challenges that will affect how the taxonomy will be created. For example, individual employees may not know how their job(s) relate to or impact operations or processes in other business lines. This gap is where the team must note the exception and, depending on how severe the effect is to the taxonomy, determine the best course of action.

At a minimum, the team may need to re-interview individuals to gain additional details on the gap or conduct a new set of interviews and surveys with additional business lines. Alternatively, the team might determine that there is an absence of policies, procedures, or governance that needs to be implemented throughout the organization to address the gap.

Create Inventories

The collective information from interviews and survey with each business line must now be consolidated into a single repository. Whether a single table or series of tables is needed to track the inventory, the team will need to ensure the information has been normalized and standardized in a format that it can be examined for consistencies and inconsistencies.

Once the information has been arranged into a record set, the team must review the complete inventory to ensure all aspects of the organization’s security, privacy, and confidentiality have been dealt with. During the inventory review, the team might identify inconsistencies in the record set that could also affect how the taxonomy is created. Like the resolution of gaps in the previous stage, the team must document the inconsistencies and potentially re-interview individuals to clarify the information before proceeding.

With the inventory confirmed to be consistent, the team will then provide each business line with the consolidated information to allow them an opportunity to provide their feedback and modifications. Quite often a business line will identify a record, such as a procedure of function, that is no longer relevant and request that it be removed from the inventory. The team should note these findings but not remove it until it has been confirmed that there are no other business lines that have procedures or functions depending on it.

Feedback from each business line must be reviewed by the team and a determination made as to whether modifications are consistent with the scope of the taxonomy. In some cases, the team may come across feedback where a business line has noted the need for modification that is specific to their operation or functions. For the taxonomy to be effective throughout the organization, the team must ensure that while feedback from each business line is considered for inclusion in the taxonomy, it must be consistent and realistic for the entire organization.

Justify a Classification Scheme

All the information collected from interviews, surveys, inventories, and business line feedback should provide the team with a good idea of how the classification scheme and associated categories within the taxonomy will be structured. The classification scheme should be structured hierarchically using generic terms and language that clearly illustrate how it will be commonly referred to, so underlying categories can be aggregated from across the organization.

Like the service catalog hierarchy discussed in Addendum B, “Service Catalog,” the taxonomy must also use a consistent and relevant series of categories to aggregate information. There should be a reasonable number of categories to simplify the classification scheme hierarchy, but not too few so that the purpose of the scheme becomes meaningless. Taxonomies should be personalized to meet the specific needs of each organization.

For example, organizations should customize the categories to better reflect the taxonomy’s mandate, accurately align with existing structures or classification schemes, or to introduce sub-categories that are relevant to corresponding parents. In some instances, there could be existing taxonomies throughout the organization that serve a purpose for a specific business operation or function. As mentioned previously, these taxonomies should be considered as reference or source data when developing an organizational taxonomy, as they may be existing categories that are applicable and can be re-used.

After the classification scheme has been rationalized, the team must distribute it to stakeholders and business lines affected by its implementation. Where feedback is received questioning the scheme, such as terminology or hierarchy, the team may need to re-interview individuals to ensure they understood information was captured accurately. When the team has resolved the issues and modifications to the classification scheme have been actioned, where and if needed, the first draft of the taxonomy can be developed.

Finalize the Taxonomy

Each draft of the taxonomy should be reviewed by stakeholders and business lines affected by its implementation. At this stage of the taxonomy development, most modifications should be focused on addressing issues with terminology and clarity and could potentially span multiple rounds of review.

With the final revision completed, the team must perform one last check for defects and ensure what is being delivered aligns with the original scope and purpose. Additionally, the team will also need to ensure that the final revision is an accurate representation of the organization’s current state in terms of security, privacy, confidentiality, legal and regulatory compliance, and technology management.

Stage 3: Govern & Grow

In this stage of the methodology, the team is focused on planning the long-term stability and sustainability of the taxonomy. With the final revision implemented, the team must develop a governance structure focused on the continued lifecycle, including:

•  Creation of policies and procedures to support its implementation and ongoing maintenance

•  Definition of the roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities throughout the organization

•  Establishment of training and awareness programs for support resources and employees

With the governance structure in place, the taxonomy should now be communicated and made available to employees throughout the organization so the terminology, classification scheme, and categorized of the subject field can be commonly and consistently used.

Summary

Creating a grouping of terms and language that are commonly and consistently used can drastically improve communication between individuals throughout an organization. It is important that as the organization changes, the terms and language also adapt to accommodate business operations and functions.