Why measuring performance is important

A number of the articles discussed in other post on this blog list measuring the performance of the organisations web activities as being important. I’ve found two articles that deal specifically with why measuring performance is valuable and how to approach governance for this important activity.

Measuring Your Web Site's Return on Investment: Whoever isn't measuring ROI on their Web site is crazy, because it is measurable (Mary K. Pratt, May 07)
Key premises of the article is measuring ROI on websites can be an effective method of assessing performance as well as improving in decisions making. Some relevant points:

• Use ROI as a way of defining what is important to the company – don’t just measure everything
• For ROI to be a useful business objectives of the site must be understood
• ROI is useful for comparing ‘what if’ situations and considering the impact of decisions that are outside of the web site, i.e. cost on other parts the business.

Web analytics governance: who’s in charge? (Hurol Inan, Feb 08)
This blog discussed why good governance of the web analytics is important. The post also includes some examples of how various organisation are approaching governance of analytics. Interesting points include:

• What is measured needs to match the web site strategies
• A lack of governance for the analytic activities can mean inconstant measurement
• Web analytics governance model should be a subset of the general governance structure, with a steering committee charged with the task of defining expectations, granting power and verifying performance.

Some examples of Web Governance

The site webcontent.gov has a section on web governance. I’ve discussed their definition of governance in an earlier post. Another useful resource is the sub-section of sample governance model. The most interesting of these is the International Trade Administration’s approach to web governance. What is strong about this particular model is it clearly establishes the notion of a web channel that encompasses both web content and web based applications.

Governance - more than just a policy manual

David Schatsky, in his first-rate article, Recipe for Web Site Governance, makes a strong case for were possible radically simplifying governance. The other powerful concept presented by David is governance is more than just a manual of standards and guidelines. He neatly introduces some very useful concept including:

1. Effective governance covers too many areas to be easily assigned to one team or areas
2. Codify expertise and rules into business process
3. Use an evidence based approach to decision making

The role of steering committees

Two articles I found advocated a web committee as an important element of effective governance. The organisation I work for used to have a web committee. Apparently this had been successful prior to being disbanded during a restructure a few years ago.

The first article, A tangled web we weaved: Who rules the site? Public affairs, the CIO or both? (Trudy Walsh, Feb 07) noted the emergence of a ‘representative governance structure’, which uses an ‘enterprise wide web council’ to manage areas such as standards, and coordinating and reorganising content;

The second excellent article, Traits of an Effective Web Steering Committee (Jason Burby, Mar 08), points out that ‘stand alone’ web groups encounter problems because for large companies the web now encompasses too many business functions and activities. A Web Steering Committee can be an effective means of balancing the various needs of the company. The committee should be seen as;

"as your board of directors for the Web channel -- senior people with a
strong overall company strategic focus. Its members should help look at
near-term success while also focusing on what's best long-term”

The article also goes on list the “Traits of a Successful, Healthy Web Steering Committee”. This is interesting because I think it covers some of the vital themes which have to be dealt with by effective governance activities. These include:

• Representation from all key groups
• Senior leadership from represented groups
• Methodology for measuring overall site performance
• Process for prioritizing initiatives based on business impact

What does Web Governance look like?

Interestingly I found more articles describing various approaches web site governance than I found defining what governance is. The variety in approaches helped clarified the concept that there was not going to be a tidy model that I could be easily adapt. Instead I try to identify themes and obvious good practice that could be incorporated into an approach for the organisation where I work. The next series of post covers the more interesting articles that I found why I think these are relevant to the discussion on web governances.

Strategic vrs Self-organising models

I found a couple of articles that reported on research conducted at Department of Public and International Affairs (George Mason University). The researchers suggested that two basic approaches to governance have emerged:

1. The “Strategic view” or centralised approach with tight approval process by one designated department
2. A “Self-organising” or looser approach with individuals and departments publishing “within the agency to post the material they deem fit for consumption”

A couple of interesting points

• The strategic approach was emerging as result over concerns about relevance of published materials to agencies missions. However, the downside is this can result in complex and often slow approval processes.
• While the wide use of a looser approach had been an important part of allowing the freedom to experiment and to learn what users wanted

Weakness with this approach
It is important to note the articles reports on research conducted sometime prior to 2006 (the date of the first article). Given that the research is at least a couple of years old it is probable that the models being examined are predominately orientated towards managing content publishing. I suspect that the researchers were unlikely to have found many organisations tackling the more challenging governance issues around online services delivery or social networking.

From what I can gather one of the reasons government agencies are still slow to take up tools such as forums and wikis are concerns over control. For agencies with a ‘command and control’ approach to the web these types of activities present a significant challenge.

References

• Web site governance hotly contested in many agencies, Joab Jackson, June 06
• A tangled web we weaved: Who rules the site? Public affairs, the CIO or both?, Trudy Walsh, Feb 07

Defining Web Governance?

For my purposes I did some trawling for a definition and found the following:

“Web Governance is the structure of people, positions, authorities, roles, reponsibilities, relationships, and rules involved in managing an agency's website(s). The governance structure defines who can make what decisions, who is accountable for which efforts, and how each of the players must work together to operate a website and web management process effectively.”
From What is Web Governance?

I thought this was reasonable. The concept that governance is made up of a range of control mechanisms is particularly useful for organisations undertaking more complex activities. However, with this definition the difference between the activities of “governance” and “management” is not immediately clear. The potential weakness of this it is possible to have a well managed web site while having poor governance. The broader of “Information technology governance” from Wikipedia (1 Dec 2008 ) does a better job of separating these.

“The primary goals for information technology governance are to (1) assure that the investments in IT generate business value, and (2) mitigate the risks that are associated with IT. This can be done by implementing an organizational structure with well-defined roles for the responsibility of information, business processes, applications, infrastructure, etc.”

This resource points out that IT governance is not just good management practices: “IT governance is about the stewardship of IT resources on behalf of the stakeholders who expect a return from their investment”. This will require a little massaging to bring into it line with my work place (a government agencies).

So for the web governance model that I’m developing I’m proposing the following:

1. Governance is the mechanisms (structures, roles, processes, business applications, etc) that an organisation uses to control the web
2. The purpose of this control is to ensure; the various web activities align with business objectives, resources are efficiently used, risks are mitigated
3. Management is the activities involved in; defining, opperationalising or undertaking the mechanisms of governance