Practical Intranet Development

Practical Intranet Development

An intranet can be a powerful tool. A well-designed intranet becomes the key resource and communications platform for your organization, used by members of staff as their first destination for information. In contrast, a poorly designed intranet will sit unused, accumulating useless information, and eating up IT budgets. So, how do you avoid this situation, and make sure you design the most useful, and usable, intranet? This book takes you through the steps you need to take to make an invaluable intranet, from identifying your users' needs and building an indispensable tool, to marketing the results. It guides you through the problems that may occur, passing on invaluable advice from people who have been through the process before. We start by setting the scene, giving an overview of what intranets are and how to justify it to your organization. We then give you a rundown of the main areas you'll need to think about when developing an intranet, covering browsers, development techniques, usability, content management, security, and internal marketing. Finally, we'll take a look at what to do when the Intranet moves beyond its original function, looking at remote access, extranets, and what to do when the Intranet gets too big.

Practical Intranet Development

Realigning Research and Practice in Information Systems Development

Given the pervasive nature of information technology and information systems in the modern world, the design and development of IS and IT are critical issues of concern. New research topics continuously emerge in tandem with the latest developments in technology-E-Business, Knowledge Management, Business Process Reengineering, for example. However, when the initial flurry of research abates and the "gloss" of these areas has diminished somewhat, as it inevitably does, the enduring core issue remains as to how to develop systems to fully exploit these new areas. Both information systems and information technology are interpreted fairly broadly in this book. Of particular interest to the editors were research studies that facilitate an understanding of the role and impact of information technology on society, organizations, and individuals, and which strive to improve the design and use of information systems in that context. The contributions to the book are categorized into four broad themes. First is the core issue of developing information systems in the current environment. In this section several fundamental challenges to current assumptions and conventional wisdom in information systems development are posed. The second section considers the management of information systems. Again, the conventional wisdom is challenged. The penultimate section focuses on researching information systems. Here, various issues to do with research methods are surfaced, and the use of leading-edge research methods in information systems development is pioneered and discussed. Finally, a section is devoted to understanding information systems. This section addresses the perennial challenge in the IS field in relation to the conceptual foundations of the field. This volume comprises the proceedings of the Working Conference on Realigning Research and Practice in Information Systems Development: The Social and Organizational Perspective,which was sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) and held in Boise, Idaho, USA in July 2001. Given the central importance of information systems development in the current age, this eclectic book, which considers the topic from a rich and varied set of perspectives, will be essential reading for researchers and practitioners working in all areas of IS and IT.