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Tony Byrne

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In praise of TIMAF

29-Dec-2010

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Enterprise Search, Portals and Content Integration, Building Business Case, Governance, Implementation, Industry Standards, Information Architecture

There's a great new book that begins with two questions:

1. "What does an information manager do?"
2. " How does she do it?"

And then proceeds to answer them both.

The book is called TIMAF Information Management Best Practices Vol. 1. I recommend it.

The longer I'm in this business, the more I see the common problems we all face as -- at their core -- information management challenges. The problem with the term "Information Management," though, is that it feels very abstract and doesn't seem immediately relevant to the workaday struggles of the typical website or data warehouse manager. Consequently it's a term that gets bandied about in academia, but not so much within the modern enterprise.

I think this book -- edited by Bob Boiko and Erik Hartman -- will help change that. It's a preliminary collection of best practices that's more specific and detailed than you'd see in the trade press, but more actionable and case-oriented than you'd see in an academic treatise (the authors are all practitioners and consultants). It's also mercifully vendor-free. [Disclosure: two of my colleagues (Alan and Apoorv) contributed chapters.]

If I had any criticism it would be that the book perhaps over-emphasizes content (versus data) in general, and structured content in particular -- a faint shortcoming that's more than redeemed by the step-by-step approach taken in most of the chapters.

As you prepare for a new year, consider going back to the basics, and check out this book.