The Findability Project Taxonomy – Part Three: The Anecdotes

This is a non-extra credit read, somewhat tangentially related to “taxonomy.” But, hey, this project is hard work and I’m entitled, as are you, to have some fun, no?

I previously alluded to how I sat down with each of the advocates in our flagship Sacramento office to view and discuss how each organized their files. I’m not suggesting you need to do this with everyone in your organization. But doing so with at least a fair cross-section of your people will teach lessons not likely learned otherwise. Let’s call it “reality.”

Three particular experiences in doing this are favorites of mine.

The first relates to the same advocate who, the good sport that he is, agreed to let me post a photo of his hard-copy file organizational scheme. When I sat down with him to take a look at how he had organized his files on a local server, it was a gloriously indulgent vision of horizontal organization. The guy (who is one of our best welfare lawyers) had 595 MB in 2,623 document files … wait for it … in one folder. Whew, talk about going “broad-and-shallow”! Because his file-naming conventions include the relevant client name, I really can’t give you a screenshot of this Ripley’s moment. There was something really extraordinary about this encounter, almost anthropological about it, akin to witnessing an indigenous tribe in the primeval, untouched by the outside world.

The second involves the polar opposite, another highly regarded lawyer who is hyper-organized. And well he should be, with 3,616 work files totalling 3 GB tightly organized in 671 folders and subfolders. Peter Morville would not likely approve of his organization scheme, I don’t think, since this advocate went for a “narrow-and-deep” hierarchy, with nine top levels and 662 subfolders, as many as five levels down.

And then there is the third anecdote, my favorite of all. As I went through this attorney’s files, I was authentically impressed by how sensible and well organized her directory structure was. While I organize my personal directories differently, hers were organized much the way many advocates in the program do (by cases or projects or substantive area), easily understood and well suited to how she works. Broad enough to hit all her bases, yet with enough subfolder depth for her to “navigate” to find particular files. A good, functional result for her.

As I showed her the project taxonomy, she was fine with the top-level selections. She understood immediately and instinctively why those choices had been made and had no quarrel with them. But when I showed her that the subfolder organization only went one-level deep, her facial expression changed noticeably. She said nothing but I could see her anxiety. So I asked her, “You look worried, a bit. What are you thinking?”

She paused and then she asked, “If you organize the shared directories this way, with only one level below the topics, how can anyone ever find anything? I don’t work that way.”

This was my response:

“Have you ever used Google?” (She good-naturedly looks back at me with her best “give me a break” smirk on her face.) “Well,” I continued, “when you search with Google you are usually able to find what you are looking for, right?”

“Of course,” she answered.

Then I said, rhetorically, “Do you think Google ‘organizes’ the Web in subfolders like you do?”

“Oh, I get it,” she said. “Everything doesn’t have to be organized that way if I have a way to Google it, right?”