Taxonomies

Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information

Helen Lippell

• Verlag: Facet Publishing
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781783305254
• Thema: Languages & Linguistics
• Thema: Library & Information Science

As organisations across the globe commit to digital transformation, well-managed taxonomies are more critical than ever in supporting a wide range of business applications. Amidst growing industry uptake of controlled vocabularies, ontologies and knowledge graphs, taxonomists are at the forefront of helping organisations manage content and data of unprecedented breadth, depth and variety.

Taxonomies: Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information is a comprehensive guide to building, implementing and using taxonomies. Featuring contributions and case examples from some of the world's leading experts, the book supports professional development through practical advice and real-world case studies. Readers will learn best practice for the everyday realities of working with stakeholders, sponsors and systems to ensure that taxonomies remain useful and relevant. Addressing all the key stages of the process of building and implementing a taxonomy, including scoping, user testing and validation, and the creation of governance processes, the book is invaluable for the optimisation of systems for users and stakeholders alike.

Part 1

Getting Started

1 Business Buy-in and Scoping

Maura Moran

Editor’s note: I asked Maura to write this chapter because I’ve seen how good she is in action, working with clients to set the scope of a taxonomy project, making it meaningful, measurable and, most of all, realistic. As is true for any technology project, a good foundation and plan is essential (even if the plan evolves along the way). A taxonomy is a business artefact that will, with the right care and attention, deliver value to an organisation for years to come.

Introduction

As an information professional, you understand that improving your organisation’s use of taxonomies can solve some of its challenges. Maybe you’ve got a problem with search, or you need to improve navigation options. Maybe you need to support a recommendation engine or a chatbot. Or maybe you just need to classify your content accurately in order to get a handle on managing your content at scale. Better use of taxonomy will help, but how do you persuade your stakeholders to invest the time and money required? And where do you start with your taxonomy project?

Whether your organisation is large or small, commercial or noncommercial, the need to secure business buy-in and scope the project correctly is the same. In this chapter I’ll share best practices and case studies that offer insight into:

• how to secure (and maintain) buy-in for your taxonomy project

• how to scope and prioritise your taxonomy development and investment

• how to maintain this investment and support in the future.

Throughout this chapter, I talk about ‘adding a taxonomy’ or ‘your taxonomy approach’. I’m using this to cover a multitude of scenarios, including starting from scratch, improving the taxonomies you’ve got or expanding the scope or use of taxonomy. The approach outlined below is relevant to many different scenarios.

Getting started

First, you need to have a clear view of what the project will deliver, the challenges you’re trying to address and how you think the taxonomy project will help address these challenges. This whole process will be iterative, and you’ll have a chance to adapt your hypotheses and refine your plan as you go along. As a first step:

1 Think about the benefits that the taxonomy project will bring, being as specific as you can:

• If you’re looking for efficiency gains, define which specific changes to your workflow will create these efficiencies, and how.

• Identify the real, underlying benefit. Improving the findability of your content is a noble goal, but what tangible benefits does it bring? Will it lead to an increase in revenue or influence? Will it lead to lower costs, perhaps through increased content re-use?

• Remember that simply introducing a taxonomy or a taxonomy management system is not in itself a benefit.

The work you do at this stage will feed into your planning and business case:

• The changes necessary to the workflow are good candidates for metrics to measure the benefits.

• The benefits you identify will feed directly into your benefit planning and the cost/benefit analysis portion of your business case.

2 Think about what processes and systems need to change to deliver the benefits, for example:

• Do you need to change how content is keyworded?

• Do you need to align and govern disparate taxonomies in your organisation?

• Do you need to change your website or search index to allow the taxonomy to improve the navigation or search?

By identifying processes and systems that need to change, you identify tasks or dependencies for your project. You can also add the people and departments who are responsible for these processes and systems to your stakeholder analysis. You are also identifying users who will be impacted by your project and who will need support with change.

3 Think about what tasks need to be done in the project. You need to source a taxonomy, of course, which probably entails creating one from scratch or modifying an existing one. You may also be selecting and implementing software, keywording content or improving the search indexing.

4 Finally, think about the people and skills you need to carry out these tasks. In terms of roles, you will probably need taxonomists, subject matter experts and keyworders. A larger project, particularly one involving new software, may also need IT people, testers, user researchers, etc. As well as your colleagues, you may also need to involve suppliers, partners and perhaps key customers. You may also need to hire into new roles or bring in contractors or consultants for additional expertise. Identifying tasks, people and skills feeds into your project planning and the cost element of your business case.

As a result of this overall thinking phase, you will gain an understanding of the general shape of the project, what the organisation will gain and what needs to be done, as well as some analysis that will help you to identify stakeholders, roles and budget.

Getting buy-in

Align to organisational goals

By now you should have identified one or more goals for your taxonomy initiative. Perhaps it’s classifying information or content more accurately, or perhaps you want to improve findability or support personalisation. In order to get business buy-in, you now need to position those goals, and your project, in terms of what your organisation is trying to achieve.

First, align your project to the organisation’s current objectives. Typically, these are described in the strategy or mission statement and may include:

• increased revenue (for commercial organisations)

• increased reach, influence or awareness (for non-commercial organisations)

• increased efficiency (both costs and effort)

• improved time to market

• improved products

• better user experience or customer journeys

• better data stewardship

• increased innovation.

A taxonomy project can deliver against any of these areas, so you can position your project accordingly to make it clear that the taxonomy project is worth investing in for your organisation.

Managing stakeholders

Identify all the stakeholders you need to influence in order to get buy-in. This includes people who will give you the go-ahead and budget, of course, but also a wider group of people who could be a help or a hindrance to your project. Stakeholders could:

• be directly involved in approving your business case

• provide you with the budget or people for your project

• be involved in the technical side – hosting, security checking, etc.

• be directly involved in creating the taxonomy or using it to tag content

• be responsible for products, services, websites, etc., that will benefit from the taxonomy

• be involved in quality control or regulatory compliance

• be accountable for the benefits you’re trying to achieve, for instance, improved revenue or fewer errors

• be a key customer or partner.

You should carry out stakeholder analysis to map your project to each person’s goals or concerns. Then, develop your messaging and plan how best to communicate with and influence your stakeholders.

Remember that different stakeholders may respond to different goals or cultural values. For instance, one may be excited by innovation while another wants to secure cost savings and a third may be focused on maintaining quality. Make sure you are able to frame your project in the right way for the right person or occasion.

Review the stakeholder list as you move through the project, especially after you have drafted the costs and benefits for your business case. This activity may reveal stakeholders you didn’t identify earlier. You should also keep a look out for allies. These are people who are not directly impacted by your project, but who may be able to help you frame the business case or influence the organisation.

Look for influence and budget

There are two more activities that can help you secure the organisation’s approval for your project:

1 If your organisation is large enough to have decision-making bodies that control strategy, investment or content governance, you should try to join them if you can, or influence them through your manager or allies.

2 Identify any existing initiatives or projects that you could join forces with. This can be a really effective way of securing budget and attention. Often it’s easier to justify the investment in the business case too, because you can talk about the combined benefits of a whole set of activities rather than taxonomy alone. Efficiency drives, new digital products, a quality focus, customer focus or website redevelopment are all good projects to align your taxonomy project with.

Effective communication

Take every opportunity to communicate. Some of the channels available to you might be face-to-face briefings, an intranet campaign, email newsletters, blogging and physical artefacts, such as posters, as well as formal reports to senior management. Remember most people won’t be interested in the technical details of a taxonomy project. Focus instead on how the project benefits the organisation and customers or users.

Ensure you can quickly explain the goals of the project in a meaningful way to stakeholders. Come up with a few sentences that can be used in slides or documents. Your first sentence should explain what you are doing and why. For example: ‘This project will improve how we classify our content so that customers can more easily find and purchase our services.’ You may also want to come up with an even shorter, memorable tagline that describes the benefits, for instance, ‘smarter content’, ‘next generation delivery’, ‘the right content at the right time’, etc. You can use this on all communications to reinforce your message.

Create a communication plan that will run throughout the project to maintain your visibility and which allows you to report progress or key achievements such as Proof of Concept (POC) or budget sign-off. Use the work you did in your initial stakeholder analysis (described above) to think about which messages and communications channels to use for each stakeholder and the wider organisation.

Case study: Educational publisher

The product management team of a leading educational publisher had some exciting ideas for their online services. They wanted to link teaching, learning and assessment materials to each other using a curriculum framework. For instance, a textbook lesson about learning fractions would link to the teacher’s notes, which would link to a quiz on the material.

Unfortunately, they underestimated the effort involved in creating a curriculum framework that would link the various materials together. The metadata manager could see that a set of taxonomies would be required, but needed to make a business case to secure the budget and people to create and maintain them. To ma...