Earlier today Diane Kubarek, Director of the Office of Web Communications at Cornell University, and Al Gonzalez, Assistant Director of Integrated Web Services at Cornell University presented at EduWeb a sessions titled “Supporting a Central Web Presence with a True Communications / IT Partnership.”
This is Drew’s second and last scheduled blog post.
Diane and Al presented a quick history of Cornell web operations spanning over the past 3 or 4 years. Tasked with a redesign/rebranding of Cornell.edu, they faced challenges resulting from a vendor/client relationship between Communications and IT. Over the course of time, stronger bonds and ultimately a virtual team was formed that enabled Cornell to drastically improve project potential.
Challenges of the initial IT Communications web development relationship.
- Hourly billing – costly, tracking overhead
- “Us vs. them”
- Shortcuts in needs analysis to save time and money
- Loosely defined sub-deliverables
- Fragmented staff
- Issues of ownership over major web projects.
- Lots of rework because of unspecified requirements.
The solution was to setup a virtual team with a dedicated service agreement.
To Arrive at this arrangement, there were initial challenges:
- Buy-in from highest levels
- handling HR and performance issues
- Co-location (or lack thereof)
The advantages of this arrangement:
- Dedicated staff for core functions
- IT Staff embedded in IT environment, while still in touch with campus Web development
- True Collaborative team
- Less Start-up time for projects – shared baseline assumptions
- Common understanding of skills, using strengths in both communications and IT
- Professional development in relevant skills for all
- Expandable expertise per project – eg QA, hosting, Web Apps, Google Search Appliance
- More Ownership
Things you need to implement this model
- High level buy in
- Trust between IT and communications
- Team members committed to working togoether and respecting each other
- Solid project management practices
The path Cornell took in establishing a centralized web team wasn’t an easy one. It took years to develop relationships, convince key stakeholders, and establish funding. But the benefits of the arrangement are very apparent.
I’m going to quote from an article not mentioned in this presentation, but it it gels well with the Cornell approach:
“Business and non-profit decision makers, for your users’ good, consider this request. Stop separating the members of your web team. Cease distributing them among various (often competitive) divisions led by people with limited web expertise. Let the coders, designers, writers, and others charged with creating and maintaining your web presence work together. Put them in a division that recognizes that your site is not a bastard of your brochures, nor a natural outgrowth of your group calendar. Let there be web divisions.”
-Jeffrey Zeldman: Let There be Web Divisions