Classification Is Not One-Size-Fits-All

I recently saw a request on a message board from a tech executive whose company needed to organize its internal files. He asked the community if anyone had a file taxonomy they could share.

Asking other companies for a taxonomy was misguided.

The taxonomy from Company A will not be right for Company B. It can give Company A ideas, but using it would be like taking someone else's shoes that are the wrong size. Yes, they are shoes, but it could be hard to walk in them.

Your company's taxonomy for internal content should be based on the attributes of that content, your departments, the nomenclature your personnel use to describe tasks and information, and other attributes unique to your organization.

You might need to reconcile some of the naming and filing conventions used by different departments in order to achieve one coherent company taxonomy.

You may need to establish relationships between and among taxonomy terms, so that information in different folders or libraries can be cross-referenced.

All this requires a thoughtful approach that should incorporate staff input and feedback, for instance in meetings, interviews, and/or surveys. Remember, it's important that staff buy into and feel ownership of a system they will be asked to adopt--and can thwart by refusal to adopt.

I once led a taxonomy project for the YMCA of the U.S.A. They wanted all their territories and branches, across the U.S. and in other countries, to be able to organize their information in a consistent way.

Through interviews, a survey, and examining file systems, my team found many discrepancies in what different YMCAs called their information types and how they organized their files.

We asked questions about:

• what information employees needed to do their jobs

• how they were using the information

• what they called it.

This facilitated process helped us develop a standard taxonomy, which could be used consistently across the YMCA of the U.S.A.'s various locations and on their national portal, making communication, filing, and retrieval easier for their employees.

At another organization, the intranet taxonomy I developed had to include the names of software products plus the categories staff applied to them, based on how they were used.

Every organization, regardless of size, has its own requirements and cultural quirks about how people name and organize information.

Some industries, such as medical fields, have standard nomeclatures. Those may need to be taken into account, as well, in the development of taxonomies for internal or external content.

Taxonomies should be developed for the organization and audiences they're meant to serve. There is no one-size-fits-all taxonomy, just as there is no one website navigation menu that fits every company's website and makes their content findable to every audience.

If you are considering--or embroiled in--a taxonomy or content organization project and need some help (or to vent!), please get in touch.