Practical Intranet Development

As the final step before forging ahead with the development of your extranet, you'll want to be certain to assemble a project plan, a living document that establishes the many details that will eventually define your extranet, including scope, timeline, and budget (among others). This project plan should be crafted once input has been gathered from all stakeholders within the enterprise, and the final draft of the document should be circulated for review and approval by all appropriate managers and employees.

Within this project plan, you should aim to achieve consensus on the following topics:

• Overview - Sets expectations within the enterprise concerning extranet goals and for which general content and functionality will be included in the initial launch.

• Content and Functionality Plan - Identifies the specific content and functionality that will be included in the extranet at launch, along with sources and owners for each type of content or functionality. As we're long past 1997 and the often-prevalent "know-it-all" attitudes that prevailed at the time, I'm not going to give you a bullet-point list of the features, content, and functionality that you should include in your extranet. After all, you intimately understand the needs of your business (or enterprise) certainly better than I do, so here are three universal rules that you can use to determine what will (or won't) be included in your extranet:

  • Increases efficiency

  • Saves the company money

  • Generates incremental revenue

  By identifying processes and practices throughout your enterprise that can enjoy one (or more) of the above benefits as a result of moving online, then you've found exactly what needs to be included in your extranet.

• Technology Blueprint - Defines all technology-related aspects of the extranet, from physical infrastructure to security, to software (servers, applications, etc.), and development tools.

• Staff Structure - Identifies, generically, the types and number of specialists needed for the project.

• Timeline - The timeline for development of each stage of the extranet, from initial concept, through development and testing, to launch.

• Budget - All costs anticipated for the development of the extranet.

• Caveats - A well-defined caveats component will ensure that all parties are aware of the importance of providing timely feedback, prompt and complete delivery of assets, etc., and the impact upon the development of the extranet should they fail to comply with the schedule or other responsibilities defined within the project plan.

By taking into consideration some of the many issues we've raised throughout this chapter, combining them with your solid business sense, a good dose of determination, and by relying on the support and expertise of your colleagues, your enterprise extranet will no doubt position your company within short order to enjoy significant cost savings, increased efficiency, and tremendously increased revenues.