1. Strategies LLC Taxonomy September 25, 2008Copyright 2008 Taxonomy Strategies LLC. All rights reserved. Essentials of Metadata and Taxonomy Strategies: Steps for Successful Project Planning Michael Lauruhn Taxonomy Strategies LLC

2. 2 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Who am I: Mike Lauruhn v Over 8 years working at Internet companies.  Member, Taxonomy Strategies  Content Intelligence Technical Specialist, CMP Media  Metadata Consultant, Interwoven  Ontologist / Category Manager, Looksmart.com v Community service.  Cataloger, California Newspaper Project  Co-President, American Library Association Student Chapter  Volunteer, Electronic Discovery Center, San Francisco Public Library

3. 3 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Purpose v Identify and explain steps to help guide a taxonomy project through an organization. v Explain how to:  Build interest and support for a taxonomy project.  Build momentum and a governance model so the taxonomy doesn’t end on the “last day” of the project. (It’s more than having the “correct” taxonomy in place.)

4. 4 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Why is this important? v Taxonomy projects can be misunderstood.  “It's the new search engine.”  “It's the new site navigation.”  “Can't we just use the site map?”  “Luxury... but not an essential project.” v Taxonomy projects can be expensive.  Involves participation from many resources.  Multiple meetings and iterations.  Can involve multiple IT applications. – Search engine, DAM, CMS, etc.  Legacy content tagging and migration projects.

5. 5 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

6. 6 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

7. 7 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Defining Use Cases v Use cases should be:  Tangible and specific.  Relevant to your organization.  Measurable.  Focused. Pick one or two applications and describe a pain point.  Avoid:  Vague and open-ended use cases. – “It’ll improve the search.”  The temptation to start with large-scale enterprise-wide use cases.

8. 8 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Defining Use Cases v Be specific with use cases:  This will give our account managers to ability to find all the assets we’ve created for a particular customer.  This will allow artists the ability to find examples of other print advertisements generated for a given demographic.  Content creators can use this to find templates used for similar communications to the one they are working on.

9. 9 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Defining Use Cases v Benefits of succinct Use Cases  Keeps the taxonomy focused.  Provides goals that stakeholders can indentify.  Makes it easy to describe to colleagues and sponsors.

10. 10 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

11. 11 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Making the case to management Identify savings to the bottom line: v Efficiencies to existing business process.  “It will save time.” v Better utilization of tools.  “We will get more use from our repository and storage.” v Lower risk.  “This will help us get better control over our clients’ intellectual property.”

12. 12 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Making the case to management v Re-state use cases: v This will give our account managers to ability to find all the assets we’ve created for a particular customer.  “This will give us better control over Intellectual Property.” v This will allow artists the ability to find examples of other print advertisements generated for a given demographic.  “This will save hours and contribute to the creative process.” v Content creators can use this to find templates used for similar communications to the one they are working on.  “This will save hours of searching and recreating content.”

13. 13 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Making the case to management v Benefits of communicating to management  Support for the immediate project.  Can help identify similar projects to leverage the taxonomy.  Makes is easier to justify expansion and future initiatives.

14. 14 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

15. 15 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Understanding your audience v Does the taxonomy make sense to:  The resources who will be tagging the assets?  The resources who use and search for the assets? v Getting their buy-in:  Re-affirm the use cases.  Interview during the taxonomy development process.  Incorporate them into review cycles.  Use existing terminology.

16. 16 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Understanding your technology  What metadata does the technology support?  Does the software automatically assign technical metadata that can be used? Size, color, scale, formats, etc. v What are the vocabulary elements that will be supported?  Will the taxonomy require: » Hierarchies? » Relationships between vocabularies? » Synonyms and alt terms?

17. 17 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Understanding your content v How will the metadata be assigned to the assets and content? v How easy is it to tag or re-tag the content? v How accessible is the metadata and how can it be re- used or deployed?

18. 18 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Understanding your audience, content & technology v Benefits  Internal anticipation and support for the immediate projects.  Avoids surprises for technical implementation.  Prevents superfluous taxonomy development and identifies unsupported functionality.  Avoids surprises for asset owners and content users.

19. 19 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

20. 20 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information The faceted taxonomy v Discrete branches of a taxonomy. v Consistent, extensible sets of attributes for labeling content and content components. Main Ingredients Cooking Methods Meal TypeCuisines Chocolate Dairy Fruits Grains Meat & Seafood Nuts Olives Pasta Spices & Seasonings Vegetables Breakfast Brunch Lunch Supper Dinner Snack African American Asian Caribbean Continental Eclectic/ Fusion/ International Jewish Latin American Mediterranean Middle Eastern Vegetarian Advanced Bake Broil Fry Grill Marinade Microwave No Cooking Poach Quick Roast Sauté Slow Cooking Steam Stir-fry Benefits: Easier to maintain. Easier to tag by content owners. Can be easier to navigate.

21. 21 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Some examples of facets v Functional Context: Function: Marketing Sales Legal Safety … Content Type: Audio Recording Banner Ad Brochure Photograph Print Advertisement Public Service Announcement …

22. 22 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Some examples of facets v Who is the asset for? Audience & Demographics: Veterans College students Families Active Military … Industries & Vertical Markets: Aerospace Automotive Healthcare Information Technology Retail …

23. 23 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Some examples of facets v Proper names:  Clients & Partners  Products & Services  Place names  People

24. 24 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Faceted taxonomy v Refer to the Use Cases when defining the facets.  This will give our account managers to ability to find all the assets we’ve created for a particular customer.  This will allow artists the ability to find examples of other print advertisements generated for a given demographic.  Content creators can use this to find templates used for similar communications to the one they are working on.

25. 25 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Build a usable and durable taxonomy v Benefits  Easier to maintain than a single comprehensive taxonomy.  Easy to use for tagging.  Allows for narrowing and expanding of searches.

26. 26 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

27. 27 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Communications, Education & Marketing v Engage stakeholders and content owners v Hold meetings and ongoing dialog:  Re-affirm the use cases.  Interview during the taxonomy development process.  Incorporate them into review cycles.  Keep stakeholders up to date about process and workflow changes.

28. 28 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Communications, Education & Marketing v Encourage content owners and users to participate in taxonomy validation exercises. v Sample tagging exercises with screenshots and spreadsheets of the taxonomy.  Helps build confidence and familiarity.  Final opportunity for feedback and questions.

29. 29 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Communications, Education & Marketing v Benefits  Engaged users will be supportive and not surprised.  Training will be less intensive for users.  Users will understand processes and feedback mechanisms.

30. 30 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Topics v Defining succinct use cases. v Making the case to management. v Understanding your audience, content and technology. v Build a usable and durable taxonomy. v Communications, education and marketing. v Planning, governance and maintenance.

31. 31 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Taxonomy Roadmap  Identifies ways key business functions organize and store information so it can be found and used later.  Makes recommendations on how to use these methods into common information organization practices.  Provides the governance model to facilitate development and maintenance of the taxonomy.

32. 32 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Planning, governance & maintenance v The taxonomy is not “locked down” upon implementation. v Taxonomy will need to grow and evolve, but in predictable way. v Taxonomy governance will help manage the taxonomy and answer questions:  How can content users make suggestions?  Who is responsible for adding new terms?  How do verdicts get reached?  When does an update taxonomy get released?  What if there is an urgent update needed?

33. 33 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Planning, governance & maintenance v Components of taxonomy governance may include:  Taxonomy governance team.  Team charter.  Multiple change request processes.  Communications model. v Duties include:  Log change requests.  Communicate changes.  Taxonomy release schedule.  Develop & maintain documentation.  Prepare training materials.

34. 34 Taxonomy Strategies LLC The business of organized information Planning, governance & maintenance v Benefits  Taxonomy owners will have documented processes for decisions.  Users will understand processes and feedback mechanisms.  IT administrators and content owners know who can make changes to the taxonomy.

35. Strategies LLC Taxonomy September 25, 2008Copyright 2008 Taxonomy Strategies LLC. All rights reserved. Questions? Michael Lauruhn, +1-415-378-2747 mlauruhn@taxonomystrategies.com mlauruhn@taxonomystrategies.com www.taxonomystrategies.com