The project plan

There are 3 overall stages:

Information Architecture
Design and Layout
Build

Information Architecture is further broken down into the following steps:

• Requirements Gathering and Site Specification

• Usability Review
• Information Analysis
• Intranet Survey
• Category Assessment
• Category Assessment in Focus Groups
• Focus Group Summary
• Information Needs Analysis
• Amend the content to reflect information needs
• Create tasks for hierarchy and interface testing
  

• Site Structure and Hierarchy

• Structure the information using focus group results and information needs analysis
• Hierarchy Testing
  

Design and Layout is further broken down into the following steps:

• Make a test layout on paper of the navigation and other items to go on the Intranet homepage
• Ask the focus groups to test this layout
• Make another test layout using the feedback from the focus groups
• Make a sample web page and test the layout
• Continue making test layouts until there are no further changes to make
• Apply designs to the layouts and test as above
• Further test the designs with more people in the company using an online survey.
  

Build is further broken down into the following steps:

• Decide on a sensible set of pages to build for an initial release of the site
• Generate any necessary content and update the current content
• Convert the paper and other test layouts into web pages
• Add the content to the web pages to be built for the initial release of the new Intranet
• Test the pages as content is added
• Continue building pages for addition to the site as above.
  

Focus Groups

The focus groups referred to were created by randomly selecting a member from each department of the company to be involved in the development throughout the project. I wrote an email to the department manager explaining what I wanted to do and who had been chosen and they all agreed I could then contact the chosen person directly to arrange their time.

Sometimes there were alternative people suggested as the randomly chosen person was going to be too busy. The participants themselves were also asked if they wanted to take part or if they wanted us to find another person in the department.

Informing the company

The plan described here was made into a presentation (in Macromedia Flash) and is published on the home page of the current Intranet. There is also a graphic tracking the overall progress of the project.

Document Management and Newsletter

Although these are part of the Intranet Re-development Programme they are not described in this plan as they are separate projects of their own.

The newsletter has the greatest relationship with the Intranet so I’ll describe that in the next post. Further posts will cover each of the stages in more detail.