20 steps to a new intranet

The following are 20 steps you should consider when implementing a new intranet along with a tip for each step.

1. Agree intranet strategy with Board/Senior Management - consider knowledge management, working practices and culture too.

2. Use strategy to produce business requirements – look to include features that will benefit your organisation and fit with the culture.

3. Define and agree scope of project – decide if it’s appropriate to look at the workflow and processes you’re giving access to via the intranet.

4. Create shortlist of platforms - research web resources and other organisations intranets.

5. Use business requirements to narrow down shortlist and to make final selection – using weighted scoring is a good approach.

6. Write project plan - ensure that all the following steps are included and who is going to carry them out.

7. Agree new intranet name and brand – it’s vital so needs its own identity. Ensure that the URL matches the name.

8. Agree and arrange hosting location and environment – large organisations should looks at mirrored servers in multiple locations.

9. Define the information architecture and site structure - ensure that stakeholders and user groups feed into this.

10. Design navigation – ensure this marches information architecture and that search and home buttons are on every page.

11. Design/look and feel of whole intranet – ensure design highly usable and re-inforces both intranet’s your organisation’s brand.

12. Design homepage – it’s the front end so spend some time on this.

13. Install and build – install and build inline with business requirements.

14. Migrate – but before you do remove out of date content from any existing systems you’re migrating.

15. Implementation of publishing system – install mechanism and intranet assets to use in the ongoing creation of content

16. Implement and configure search – ensure your search indexes the whole of your intranet and all the document storage areas.

17. Test and obtain feedback – test with your stakeholders and user group.

18. Produce comms plan – a new intranet is a big change so ensure people are aware.

19. Train and provide help – set up classroom training and provide lots of online help.

20. Launch