We’ve laid out our take on the theoretical approach to the TFP taxonomy. But in practice, how is LSNC actually implementing those organizational concepts or principles? That is what this post is about.

I’ll just give you the end-product upfront and then explain how LSNC sorted out the basic taxonomic structures for its shared document repository. The two PDF files linked below are copies of what was distributed at a program-wide meeting a few weeks ago to address and resolve what the basic organization structures would look like.

• Download: 29 Top-level Project Directories
• Download: Simplified Project Taxonomy

It was actually quite easy to come up with an initial (if bloated) proposed list of likely substantive advocacy content targets, their location, and how the content would be organized, but even that required process.

LSNC has what it calls a “regional counsel” model, which means there are three designated advocacy leaders with senior substantive, litigation and advocacy experience who are expected to provide just that, “leadership.” (One of the three, by the way, is Mona Tawatao who is the recipient of the 2007 NLADA Reginald Heber Smith award.) The regional counsel, with feedback from other management leadership (including the executive director, a few local office managing attorneys interested in this particular project detail, and the senior office manager representing support staff interests) worked up the list, later vetted more broadly with the entire management team, who in turn vetted it with each of their local offices or other program unit.

In the initial proposal, the substantive advocacy content was organized based on the ten LSC Problem categories in current use by legal services programs, plus roughly an additional 30 or so other general categories. The latter included additional substantive categories (economic development, disaster relief, etc.), practice matters (e.g., federal and state court practice issues, discovery, etc.), and other work-related content (self-help clinic content, specialized training materials, etc.) that reflect what LSNC and other legal services field programs actually do for a living. In response to any number of discussions and comments by the smaller group thrashing the details out, the list at times expanded and contracted, went deeper and then sometimes more shallow. This initial organization structure also included targeted content related to local office and central administrative office work. A similar vetting process was undertaken by the senior office manager with all the other office managers in all the core local offices, as well as administrative and business office managers. As mentioned earlier, each of those, in turn, were asked to vet the structures with their respective staff.

This process did not operate in a project vacuum. As not only one of the three regional counsel but also the person responsible for managing this project, I also did what I think managers should always do: I talk to the people affected. I took the time, a lot of it, to speak directly and individually with all of the forgoing to explain the overall project and its technical demands, and in a non-technical fashion (well, at least I tried) the significance of developing an organizational structure, and other, related issues, such as the use metadata models to attribute value to the targeted content, and so on. The point being, to take the time to assure leadership understood from more than a memo what the project is about, why it matters, and answer their questions or concerns. In response to the vetting and these dialogs, real changes were made in the proposed organization and additional content targets were identified. Time investments paid dividends, at least in this case.

By the time our GSA consultant showed up for a scheduled three-day thrashing of our test-bed installation in Sacramento, we had a taxonomy with over 40 top-level directories and a lot of two- and three-level deep subdirectories. He looked at this, in a non-committal fashion said “that’s fine,” and then began to suggest reasons why it should be simplified. This push by the GSA consultant was prompted by notions of usability and manageability of the content areas. As mentioned in the prior post on project taxonomy, there are not significant advantages or improvements to search results in a repository structure beyond a second-level directory. The consultant also emphasized that most users are not likely to locate or use a directory substructure below the second level. (This has to do with users navigating directory structures to add, remove or modify files, for whatever reason.)

Since a significant portion of the metadata models we are adopting rely on the organization structures in order to build logical, searchable “collections,” we simplified the structures in response to the consultant’s recommendation in this regard. Hence, the 29 top-level directories and the “simplified” taxonomy you can see in the memos linked at the beginning of this post, and the reliance on only one-level deeper for those directories.

As we get life experience with this organization structure, my guess is that we may expand to add a few additional top-level directories but not many, if any. I think we have things pretty much covered at the top-level, at this point. But apart from the rigid yet practical exploitation of the dated — but undeniably familiar — LSC Problem Codes for a large chunk of the substantive organization, my guess also is that the one-level down subdirectory structures will likely change as users give us feedback, and we discover that some subdirectories are not particularly used or useful. Proof’s in the pudding, people.

This all came full circle with our program-wide meeting a few weeks back. By the time of that meeting, every manager within LSNC had seen the organization proposals, every manager had a one-on-one conversation with project staff about the project and the organization structure, every manager had vetted the proposal to his or her people, and the memos you see linked here had been distributed to all offices.

That’s how we roll.