The Eyeopener , the Ryerson’s independent newspaper, has a story about the delay of the $ 500,000 redesign of the Ryerson web pages/content. The article indicates that the project will be at least 4 months behind schedule with only about 20% of the actual web content being updated.
Andy Walker, “who helped launch Canada.com and Msn.ca’s news service”, provides the best quote:
“If there are some complex technologies implemented that interface with lots of different departments, chances are it’s the bureaucracy of the organization that’s causing the problem, and not the actual implementation of the website.”
You don’t say!
The part I love is the disparity between what one group of users are saying, versus the executive in charge of the program.
- Project executive: “Most people with very minimal training will be able to update the site on an ongoing basis.”
- Student user:”It’s annoying to have to go to one site to check your exam schedule and then another to get faculty contacts. Just incorporate them,” he said.
Do you detect a difference in goals, motivations and expectations? So it sounds like the University will be able to hire students and not invest a lot of time or money into training them to update the site. That doesn’t provide the information that they want. Brilliant! It sounds like many of the mistakes that Jakob has talked about regarding organizational culture and corporate intranets. The different is that there are more users than just employees. There are students, prospective students, parents, the press, etc. I hope that they are successful eventually.