MNIT recently built and launched a new employee intranet. We've received many emails from employees with questions about what went into the project. Here is part 1 of the story of our project, including some best practices and lessons learned.

The Project Team

Our project plan, project manager, and a superb team of experts paid off for our intranet project. We involved teams from Communications, Project Management, Web Development, Enterprise Endpoint Systems Management (Workstation Management), Middleware (Apache configuration), and Microsoft SharePoint support teams and content owners.

Understanding our purpose - why are we doing this?

Our intranet project was tied to a much larger purpose: to write a policy that would make sure information gets shared with the intended audience. The policy was the MNIT Communications policy. It outlined the types of information we share as an agency, the audiences we share information with, and the vehicles we use to do that.

For the intranet project, the purpose was very clear: create a private website for MNIT staff with the current information, news and updates they need as employees.

Project Managers are worth their weight in gold

Our project manager kept us on track, and kept the project in-scope. Frequent check-ins kept everyone in the know and our eyes on the end goal. After the launch, we used an issue tracker to make sure we addressed any outstanding problems, and kept track of all the ideas for improvement that employees sent us.

Scope and Requirements

We learned that it's essential to have a clear picture of how you want the intranet to function and look at the beginning of the project. Our plan allowed for the flexibility to make changes along the way to make sure we met all the requirements.

Best Practice: Business requirements are key to a successful outcome. They define your purpose and objectives. They help developers know how to design and build your intranet. The document is a roadmap that sets expectations, milestones and timelines to keep the project on track and on budget.

Coming next week in The MNIT Intranet Story Part 2: Advance planning, an inventory of content to keep, and using personas to identify audience needs.