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Strategic IA Careers: Skills and Knowledge for Success

Information architecture:

Designing high-value content delivered in an

effective information experience that enables client success

High-value content: • Speaks directly to client/buyer/user business goals • Includes only the tasks necessary to achieve those goals • Aids the client in making decisions or applying concepts in their own situations • Is technically rich in the sense that it includes validated real-world samples, examples, best practices,

and lessons learned High-value content does not:

• Focus on manipulating elements of a user interface (those things that everyone knows by now, such as "Type your name in the name field")

• Describe tasks that can't be mapped to a meaningful goal or objective • Describe what to do without explaining how to do it • Describe how to do it without explaining why to do it Information experience:

Professional Development Progression Andrea Ames—STC Summit 2013

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Tactical vs. Strategic IA Tactical information architecture: Concrete Typical tasks include: • Update a navigation tree according to design

guidelines and standards • Apply models and guidelines to develop

information architecture for a product release or self-contained information deliverable

• Solve architectural issues with guidance from a strategic information architect (IA) or information strategist

Strategic information architecture: Abstract Typical tasks include: • Architect a product’s total information

experience (not just technical docs) • Develop a cross-product or portfolio

information experience • Prioritize requirements • Apply models in new and novel ways to get

validated improvements in the end-to-end information experience

• Provide input for model or guideline improvement

• Create and validate new models and guidelines

Strategic IAs are: • Focused on client perceptions

• Of the total information experience • Of the value of content for achieving their goals

• Focused on business priorities • For the total information experience • For the value of content to business strategy

• Focused on the total information experience • Multiple information deliverables • Multiple authors • Formal and informal content • Official and collaborative or social content

Strategic IAs are not: • Focused on one kind of information deliverable • Focused on information products from one kind of information development team (such as just the

technical product documentation team) • Focused primarily on things like topic modeling, navigation hierarchies, and labeling schemes

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Scope: Tactical and strategic IAs in the organization:Strategic IAs: • Across the entire company, a group, a division, a portfolio, or a single product • Across Tech docs, Support, Marketing, Engineering, etc.

Strategic information architecture skills Skills with humans: User research • Conduct user and task analysis • Develop personas • Develop scenarios, use cases, and user stories User advocacy • Develop a deep understanding of users, their tasks,

goals, and requirements • Become their champion without becoming one of them;

maintain objectivity • Negotiate for user wants and needs during planning and development processes Human factors • Understand and design in support of human cognitive processes in information interactions • Validate models and designs with intended users using

a variety of methods

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Skill with modeling: • Ability to analyze and express complex information relationships through modeling • Ability to model the user task flow • Ability to model information topics • Fluency with information architecture models and their application, such as:

• Use models (for product- and information- use scenarios)

• Content models (for the building blocks of consistent content)

• Access models (for navigation patterns, wayfinding, and progressively disclosing information)

Skill with information and design: Disciplined creativity • Ability to synthesize competing requirements to create innovative solutions • Ability to create in an ideal world, then collaborate and negotiate back to reality (that is, take

incremental steps toward the ideal, given resource, time, and other constraints) Organizing information • Make the complex clear • Understand, expose, and deliver information relationships

through navigation, linking, and other retrieval methods Information experience design • Information design skills such as minimalism, progressive disclosure, chunking, information

presentation, and delivery • Interaction design • Commitment to consistency and rigorous attention to detail • Ability to simplify and reduce words while maintaining essential meaning Analytic skills: • Systems thinking (see backup) • Synthesize competing requirements to create innovative solutions • Analyze complex relationships

and strategic ideas • Find the patterns inherent in data • Critical thinking • Problem solving • Root cause analysis • Take an abstract, complex or ambiguous challenge and come up with a concrete, real-world

solution proposal Business skills: • Communication and presentation skills • Negotiation and diplomacy • Political savvy and ability to network • Skill in understanding and making decisions based on business strategy • Able to build a business case and justify architecture, designs, and approaches with customer and

business impact statements

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Leadership skills: Vision • Passion • Strategic and systems thinking • Enthusiasm for and evangelism of the strategy • Ability to influence and drive direction of a large team • Willing to make a decision (and be held accountable, if necessary) Commitment to delivery • Able to commit and deliver • Delegating, and delivering through others when appropriate Investment in others and the health of the team • Able to take input from the team easily • Able to build team capacity (for example, commitment to mentoring, intentional efforts toward

filling the pipeline and growing IAs, educating the team, and so on) • Consistent but not rigid; able to consistently reinforce a message to help the team grow Other soft skills: • Self-motivation (diagnosing a problem and then relentlessly pursuing a meaningful resolution that

makes a difference) • Emotional intelligence and professional maturity • Intelligent fearlessness (being willing to step forward but smart about when and how) • Integrity • Respect (for example, for others'

ideas and time) • Good listening skills • Ability to give credit to others and share the spotlight • Flexible, able to change, and able to accept what cannot be changed • Comfort working with abstract or ambiguous projects or ideas Derailment factors: Characteristics that limit strategic IA effectiveness• Views IA as a promotion strategy (for

example, “I just want to get to Senior Writer”) as opposed to a career path with a specific skill set and aptitudes

• Power mongers • Dictatorial for own political agenda • Passive; waits for assignments from others • Timid; fears speaking up, taking risks, or

gracefully challenging an idea • Driven by “don’t fix it if it’s not broken” • Tends toward excessive autonomy or

isolation • Lacks willingness to connect, collaborate • Lacks tact • Unable to tolerate ambiguity

• Views role in a silo; can’t envision their work relative to other content creators around the company, or to the work of others on the extended team

• Unable or uncomfortable thinking in the abstract (that is, concrete thinkers)

• Needs rules, a recipe, a cookbook, or “the right answer”

• Too attached to guidelines; unable to question or advocate for legitimate change

• Never follows guidelines or considers constraints

• Tends to get lost in the details (all trees, wrong forest)

• Can’t see beyond the boundaries of their own “book” (all trees, no forest)