Thursday, March 19, 2009

Learn to speak the language of the C-Suite

Yesterday evening I attended the March meeting of Web Content Mavens to hear Lisa Welchman’s presentation on how to explain web site management to senior management. She spoke with candor about the problems of persuading the technical, marketing, and management representatives to work together.

Welchman said that it was important to establish governance authority at the very beginning. For example, IT must have final say on load balancing while marketing must have final say on presentation. I asked her if making those decisions up front might be arbitrary, as discussion might prove the original theory to be unworkable. Welchman was insistent that it was essential to have a broad framework for governance. (I was thinking back to the Federal XML Work Group meeting of May 18 2004. At the IRS, content is driven by Business Operating Divisions and process owners, leading to duplication of effort and an updating nightmare. In the future, content will be driven by the content data model, MITS via BSMO/EDMO, an easily updatable trusted source. Claude Matthews predicted a collision and I suspect it has been very difficult.)

Welchman said that web experts should not talk about meta data or taxonomy; but rather document specific benefits to be had by implementing change.

She will be joining Tony Byrne for Web Tools and Rules next month. I am sorry I won’t be able to attend, because it sounds like the premier web content event in our area.

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