At Digital Garden we have a step by step Intranet project methodology that has been perfected through years of experience. We take into account your requirements from the outset and confidently deliver an Intranet that meets your goals and objectives. 

Our step by step process involves:

Discovery

We meet with you to discuss the Intranet requirements of your staff and business. We’ll look at governance, benchmarking and social media readiness. In discovery we use research techniques such as:

• Focus Groups
• One on One Interviews
• Workplace Observations
• Contextual Inquiry

Strategy

In the Strategy stage, we compile your research and requirements to find an approach that fits your needs.

We’ll ask you questions about:

• Content - What content will be in the Intranet? Is it a repository for both corporate and business unit information? Communication - Will this Intranet communicate to all staff? 
• Collaboration - Is this Intranet going to be used mainly for teams, projects or communities? What collaboration and social features do you need?
• Culture - Is the new Intranet a reflection of the current organisational culture and/or a support for culture change?
• Activity - Is this Intranet merely an informational tool or will it be a ‘place for doing things’ that focuses on business processes and task completion?

Functionality

Here the project team starts looking at the practical details. Every Intranet is different and we look closely at your company’s unique needs.

• Will it be a user-driven personalised experience?
• Is there a need for it to be multilingual?
• Which social tools will be used ie Yammer Will there be a Video platform?
• Which collaboration tools will be used?
• What online forms will be used? What does it integrate with, eg office?

Design

At Digital Garden we practice a ‘user centered design’ process. Working closely with your staff during the entire project, we will design an Intranet that is intuitive and made expressly for its users.

The following are a some of the deliverables in this phase:

• Information Architecture
• Prototyping / Wireframes
• User Testing
• Design Concepts
• Design templates and elements
• Build Style Guide
• HTML templates

Technology

Here the detailed technology based decisions are made. We create a thorough technology specification document that helps minimise surprises during the development stage.

This document will cover:

• The overall platform and server architecture
• The configuration of SharePoint functionality
• Documentation on:
  • Information Architecture
  • Functional specifications
  • Prototypes
  • HTML templates
• Hosting reviews

Implementation

When it’s time to implement the new Intranet, we bring to life everything gathered in the previous stages.

At this stage we cover:

• Establishing the technology platform
• Implementation of new site structure (IA)
• Configuration of tools and software to be used
• Set and establish content types and lists
• Implement the user desired page templates
• Implement the selected visual design concepts
• QA and UA testing

Our platform of choice for Intranet development is Drupal. When working with technologies such as Sharepoint or Oracle we partner with implementation partners for the build.

Population

Once the Intranet has been established we make sure that new content as well as existing content is migrated as a part of the project. There are three major ways of populating content into the new Intranet:

• Manual migration / population
• Automated migration / population
• Partially automated migration / population

Adoption

In the final stage we ensure the client successfully adopts the new Intranet into their day to day operations.

We help you to establish the following:

• Train the client content authors, managers and owners
• Set standards and guidelines
• Determine a decision making process for Intranet changes and improvements
• Determine the ongoing central team that will manage high level aspects of the site
• Continuous Intranet reviews and enhancements
• Set Intranet change management and adoption activities

We do more than simply hand over the new Intranet to our clients. We consider things like client training to ensure that our clients are familiar and comfortable with the new Intranet.