I feel the pain of documents unfound
New Architect: Bottoms Up: "I have been flabbergasted in recent months by taxonomy construction projects in Fortune 500 companies. Some completely lack user research, and there is often a fierce resistance to discussing how the taxonomy will be used. Let's just focus on the taxonomy, they say. We don't want to get distracted by implementation details.
[...]
Inspired by Yahoo and encouraged by portal software vendors, many Web and intranet managers have embarked on a long, painful, and doomed journey to build a single, all-purpose enterprise taxonomy. "
To which Victor responds: "Interestingly, I've been experiencing the opposite scenario. Recently I've been meeting people, usually technologists toking at the XML pipe, who only want to do bottom up design. When I ask, 'Who are the users? What are their intentions? What is the scope of your project?' I find a lack of solid answers. Balance (of top-down and bottom-up) is my new rallying cry."
So we have:
1. The visionary business dude: "We need a taxonomy. Everyone else is getting one and I read all the literature. It says 'fuzzy matching technology'. It says 'baysian logic'. It says 'huge improvements in technology'. I feel the pain of documents unfound, will this save the day?"
2. The project manager: "I was told to do a taxonomy. Let's get on with it, I have a deadline. We'll do a usability test before launch."
3. The XML technologist: "Ah, some good data analysis work coming up. I'm gonna enjoy this, I shall sit in my cube and do intelligent things."
With all due respect to each of these difficult roles that I could never take on because of a lack of skills on my part.