If you’re reading this, you obviously have some kind of interest in your law firm’s intranet, whether you work in IT, the library, marketing, or elsewhere within your firm. Maybe you have some decision-making power, or perhaps you work on day-to-day maintenance of your intranet and related projects. No matter what your role or status, you should be thinking about how to involve your intranet in the project management (PM) efforts going on at your firm.
If you haven’t heard the term before, a Project Management Office, or PMO, is an established department or group that defines and maintains the project management process at your firm. The PMO can be a source of standardization, documentation, guidance, and metrics, and is usually based on formally recognized and accepted principles such as the Project Management Institute and their widely used Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). If you come from a large firm, your PMO could connect and provide overall management structure for already existing processes and workflows at your firm such as incident, problem, change, release, and configuration management, which are all parts of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework. Chances are, however, if you are part of a smaller firm, a PMO could simply bridge the gap and provide visibility and support between management committee and project teams.
If your firm has a PMO already, then your task should be to get involved with it as much and as soon as possible. Talk to the lead project manager (PM) and ask for a presentation overview to your department, to show how the PMO benefits the firm. During that presentation, ask what kind of projects go through the PMO (size, responsibility, visibility, budget, etc.), and if your intranet projects are not already on the PMO radar, talk about the firm-wide reach of your intranet and the importance of the availability of technology and firm support. Make sure that the PMO knows about what you’re doing, and what you’d like to do, so they can help you plan for projects at a higher level.
Now, it’s my understanding that PMOs are not widely established within law firms, so this may be unfamiliar territory to some of you. Even if your firm doesn’t have a PMO, there are some things you can do to raise the visibility of your intranet projects.
- Start using a project plan of some sort. It can be a simple outline that includes overview, approach, specifications, tasks, schedule, cost/budget, and staffing/resources. Circulate this plan and keep it up-to-date.
- Talk to your managers about your project. This could include people like your department director, the CIO, CKO, library or IT director, management committee, or technology partner. Get them on board and keep them informed often of your progress.
- Dedicate an official (or unofficial!) project manager, even if it is only a portion of their job duties. You need to have someone responsible for the project plan, overall details, and keeping things on track. Make sure others know who that person is.
- Get your users involved early. They will be your information sources, advocates, validators, and testers. User involvement should be a planned part of your project.
- Establish a team that you can rely on. This could include content experts, librarians, trainers, marketers, technology experts, or application developers. Rally them around your project, get them excited to work with you and what you’re doing. Keep them updated on the progress as it applies to them.
- Stick to your schedule as much as possible. Even if the deadlines are self-imposed, you will gain much more credibility if you can meet your goals.
- If possible, deliver a “quick win” early on in your intranet project. This is something that is fairly easy to do that will impact a larger number of users. This will make everyone happy and keep them engaged for future phases or deliverables.
I realize that it’s easier said than done to create visibility and support for an intranet project, especially if it’s not viewed as one of your firm’s high priorities. Keep talking to people, start documenting and distributing your plan, and get involved with as much PMO-like activity that you can.
For more law firm PMO tales, you might want to check out this multi-part article series called PMOs and Law Firms: Lessons from the Field from the Project Management Hut.
-Amy Witt
We’ve opened registration for the third webinar in our current series titled “Creating a Successful Law Firm Intranet.” This one is on Developing with Users, and continues the discussions about our five-phased intranet development approach, which includes research, design, development, rollout, and measurement/maintenance. Register for the third session, or register for the rest of the series. Options are available to purchase a recording of each of the first two sessions when registering.
WEBINAR 3: Developing with users.
Wednesday, July 23 Noon -1:00 PM Central Time
In this session you will learn:
- Five pitfalls to avoid during development of your intranet.
- How to create a test plan to ensure success.
This session is once again moderated by Nina Platt of Nina Platt Consulting, and presented by Amy Witt and Laurie Southerton, along with another law firm case study. Other details include:
FEE: $30.00 US Save 15% when 5 or more attendees register from the same firm.
REGISTRATION: Registration is by credit card or check. Registrations received after July 22, 2008 may not be accepted depending on space availability.
SUBSTITUTIONS: Institutions that have remitted payment of the required fee are permitted to substitute a replacement attendee from the same institution in place of the original registrant at any time.
GROUP REGISTRATIONS: Save 15% when 5 or more attendees register from the same firm. Please refer to the instructions on the registration form for registering more than one person for the event.
Mark your calendars for the next 2 webinars in this series:
Webinar 4: You built it, now will they come? Plan the successful intranet rollout.
Wednesday, August 20 Noon -1:00 PM Central Time
Webinar 5: Measure & Maintain: Planning for your Intranet’s future.
Wednesday, September 24 Noon -1:00 PM Central Time
We hope you will join us for another informative session!
-Amy Witt
It was recently pointed out that I neglected to mention the word “library” or “librarian” at all during the content and staffing sections of our recent webinar on intranet design. Honestly, I can’t believe I did that. What a slip-up for someone who works daily with librarians! I guess I just take their involvement as something so central, that I forget that others may not. Let me attempt to redeem myself…
The firm librarian or library department should be involved in developing and choosing the content of your intranet. Their interaction with practices, administration and all levels of staff provide them a unique take on how the firm works and how information flows through the firm. They also have a lot to add around the topics of categorization, taxonomy, and content organization.
As for interface design and functionality, they work with web sites and services heavily and have skills in the evaluation of web services for content and usability. Get them involved early and you may be surprised at the benefits they can bring to your project.
Finally, as for intranet staffing and project team membership, librarians can be your allies in many respects. Part of a law firm librarian’s job is to foster relationships with partners, associates and new lawyers surrounding resources and library services training. If you also have them heavily involved in your intranet (whether on the governance board, steering committee, project team, or some other way), guess what else they’re going to talk to those associates and new lawyers about? That’s right - using the intranet!
No matter how you get them involved, your firm library can definitely add a lot to your intranet project. Don’t make the same mistake as I did in my presentation and leave them out! You might not realize it right away, but you will probably regret it.
-Amy Witt
