1.3 People involved in a website 

This section describes functional groups and user roles which are typically brought together in a collaborative environment when building a website.

Introduction

Building and maintaining a website using a content management system such as IBM Web Content Manager (WCM) is not a task to be undertaken by a single individual. It is not that this is an impossible task, rather this task requires skills, experience, and knowledge that usually come from many individuals working in a collaborative environment. Typically, we bring together individuals from three areas (business, technology, and information) and four distinctive groups (business, technical, content, and design (or layout). Depending on the size of the business and situation, it is possible for the same person to be split across positions in these groups.

The functional groups represented include:

• Business
• Technology
• Information

The specific user roles include:

• Business owners
• Corporate communications and marketing personnel
• Graphic designers
• Information architects
• Infrastructure engineers and operations
• Content authors, subject matter experts, and approvers
• Consumers

Functional groups

The functional groups consist of business, technology, and information groups. Expanding on these functional groups, it shows the areas where skills, experience, and knowledge are needed.

Business functional group

The members of this group typically see the business vision for a website and chart its progress to meet this vision. They know the line of business requirements, define the success criteria of the project, and can help to define the underlying information architecture. From the business process perspective, they can identify where the current barriers exist that need to overcome with this project.

Typical members of this group include members of the management board, a project sponsor or sponsors (which is sometimes shared), business owners, and process leaders.

Technology functional group

The members of this group represent multiple areas that touch all aspects of general IT, from infrastructure and network architecture to specialized Internet Service Providers (ISPs, hosting providers). Members of this group are proficient with the business defined technical architecture and have a solid understanding of the technical requirements of the website.

Typical members of this group include members of the IT and architecture board, IT management and experts from third parties (ISPs and CMS technical experts if skills do not already exist), infrastructure engineers, and operations.

Information functional group

Within the information functional group, it is important to split it into (1) content generation group and (2) content design and layout group. This is an important concept within Web Content Manager.

Content generation group

The members of this group represent the subject matter experts, authors, content owners, and the target group for whom the information is intended. Members of this group are extremely important because they have a deep knowledge about existing application resources and content that needs to be integrated.

Typical members of this group include representatives from the various specialized content areas of the business (products and within, marketing, corporate communications, and so on).

Content design and layout group

The members of this group represent the delivery, styling, and management of the visual elements within a Web site. They specialize in delivering a complete user experience (UX) that is easily consumed by visitors, while maintaining a consistent corporate style across the website. In this way, visitors can glean the information and knowledge required.

Typical members of this group include web layout designers, developers, UX subject matter experts, and associated test groups.

Communication and collaboration among the groups

With the three main area and their functional groups defined, the communication and collaboration between these groups must stay at a level where there is always a clear understanding of where responsibilities lay. In addition, these groups must clearly understand and work toward the goals of the website. A good practice to keep these groups collaborating effectively is to have frequent interaction among them as illustrated by the following figure.



Note: These groups are key to building and maintaining the process and groups that persist along with the longevity of the website. While omitted here is the consumer or visitor, this group is vital for obvious reasons and can be logically grouped with the design or layout team because they will be responsible for the experience provided by the website. We talk about the consumer in a another section.

Roles

The user roles consist of business owners, corporate communications and marketing personnel, graphic designers, information architects, infrastructure engineers and operations, content authors, subject matter experts, and approvers, and consumers.

Business owners

As mentioned previously, the delivery of a content management system-based website is one where we can typically bring together individuals under four distinctive groups that collaborate together on a single goal, for the website. The business group has the vision for the website. They know the line of business requirements and can define the success criteria of the project among other responsibilities.

Members of the management board and executive team perform the following tasks:

• Set and announce the key business objectives.
• Set the business context.
• Define the project sponsors (because this can be shared).
• Authorize the process leaders.
• Set the project budgets and the time line.

The project sponsor or sponsors (part of the organization that is driving the project) perform the following tasks:

• Work with business owners and content owners to define the information architecture.
• Define key concepts and terminology.
• Steer the decision process.
• Manage the project.

Process leaders perform the following tasks:

• Manage the project.
• Define the resources that are required.
• Work with business owners and content owners to define taxonomies that categorize and organize information for both the content creator and the content consumer. These tasks are closely related to the underlying information architecture.

Corporate communications and marketing personnel

A superset of the content group is corporate communications and marketing personnel. This group is responsible for ensuring that the messages, products, and general information that are delivered to the consumer are consistent, well defined, easily digestible, and clear overall. Corporate communications and marketing individuals might make up some of the people who are already defined as part of the content group or, in some cases, provide direction from a higher level.

The corporate communications and marketing team performs the following tasks:

• Ensures information consistency.
• Verifies that the general delivery of the product, service, or corporate information is clear.
• Approves information style and language, as well as access.

Graphic designers

The design and layout group is responsible for delivering the complete user experience for the website visitor. The responsibilities include layout, styling, corporate branding, and accessibility, for example, in addition to the areas mentioned in the following list.

The design, layout, and development team performs the following tasks:

• Helps to create and stamp the corporate design on the website.
• Ensures that styling and layout provide a flexible user experience for the visitor.
• Liaises with subject matter experts where necessary to address accessibility needs.
• Works with the IT team to technically implement the corporate design.
• Helps to create the author's template environment.

Information architects

Aligned with the group for IT, the information architect (sometimes known as information designers ) team closely works with individuals from the group and are responsible for the delivery of the structure to the content, categorization, placement, and alignment with the visitors' expectations of information placement.

Content information architects perform the following tasks:

• With the design team, ensure the best fit and alignment with the visitors' mental model of information.
• Help define the taxonomy in association with the content authors and subject matter experts.
• Define the content structure and groupings with the design team.

Information architects can be seen as an extension of the design and user experience group. Because common elements are shared across both areas, it is important to keep communicating and working in a collaborative partnership.

Infrastructure engineers and operations

The infrastructure engineers and operations team is part of the wider IT group and is responsible for ensuring that the systems are put in place and maintained according to corporate standards. These standard typically fall into two areas: systems (the underlying software stack, for example, the application server) and network (the architectural guidelines of how system communicate or do not communicate with each other).

The infrastructure engineers and operations team performs the following tasks:

• Designs the content management systems to fit with previously defined network and system architectural standards.
• Establishes processes to monitor and maintain the system.
• Works with the business to align budget with standards (resilience, scalability, and so on).

Content authors, subject matter experts, and approvers

Content is gold. Without it, a website ceases to be beneficial to visitors. As such, the content team is responsible for ensuring that content is created, categorized, quality assured, and approved to be visible on the website.

Content authors, subject matter experts, and approvers perform the following tasks:

• Provide content expertise and writing.
• Help define the taxonomy with the information architects.
• Help define the content structure with the information architects.
• Provide first-level template support.

Content owners perform the following tasks:

• Provide content quality assurance (accuracy, relevance, and so on).
• Provide usability feedback.
• Approve content.

Consumers

Today, information, products, and services are acquired over the Internet through websites that are built with Web Content Manager. Web sites are a vehicle to unite consumers with products or information, and as such, the consumer plays the lead role. Consumers switch between competitive websites with the click of a mouse button if they do not find what they want within seconds of their visit. This is also the case with procurement of services and products. Sales are quickly lost if a consumer's mental model of how their interaction should take place is not aligned with how the website works. Clearly, consumers are important.

For new websites, all consumer feedback is important. Getting the website wrong costs time, money, and consumers' trust. However, there is difficulty with getting it right the first time if you do not have user feedback to work with. The question is: how do you get that feedback before your website goes live? There are several answers to this question. One that stands out is to solicit the expertise of user experience, information architects, and user centered practitioners, along with a targeted sample of willing participants from the general community. This is typically a standard practice among the methods used by these professions.

For websites that are already in place and perhaps transitioning to a new experience, such as a portal or new design, it is becoming common practice to offer certain groups within the websites' core user base to have access to a live beta version of the site to gain feedback. This approach can be advantageous where there is a need to ensure business as usual.

Consumers in a role that assists the organization perform the following tasks:

• Provide live and relevant website feedback.
• Can validate use case scenarios, check, and balance.
• Help eliminate overlap and misinterpretations of new design elements.
• Provide usability feedback, crucial with accessibility.
• Approve content.
  

These roles and their functions are typically brought together in a collaborative environment when building a site.