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Spend more time with family and friends, lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier, quit smoking, quit drinking; these are the granddaddy's of all New Year's Resolutions. And at one time or another I'm sure many of us have attempted to put forth that valiant effort to carry out our own personal resolutions — to varying degrees of success. We would loudly proclaim to better ourselves as the clock strikes midnight on the eve of the New Year, confident in our success and determined to follow through regardless of any obstacle.

Unfortunately, most of these well-intentioned resolutions for better living don't last past the second week of the New Year. By the third week, your once regimented routine of eating a handful of fresh carrot sticks before a morning jog devolves into downing a big bag of Doritos in front of the TV during a six-hour "Seinfeld" marathon.

While a failure to carry out these types of personal resolutions may have a more profound effect on you than anyone else, a failure to carry out intranet initiatives will impact an entire user community. So why not kick off the New Year by saying, "This year I resolve to..."

Stay in Touch: Renewing Relationships With Users and Colleagues

We are often so consumed by deadlines, project deliverables, and budgeting issues that we can easily forget about the people around us: our users, customers, colleagues, and team members. And ironically, for all the time and effort we pour into the projects and systems we develop, we wouldn't have a job without these people. Yet this knowledge is too frequently lost in a blizzard of non-stop activity.

While we each have our own tasks and priorities to contend with, it doesn't mean that we should lock ourselves inside our own work-laden bubble. Our relationship with colleagues and users is as important as the systems themselves because the success of the latter will be dependent on the quality and effectiveness of the former.

Take the time to set up an occasional "State of the Intranet"-type meeting between all content owners and intranet developers to discuss things such as the status and relevancy of the current system, what needs to be improved upon or added, and most importantly, what their users are saying about the intranet.

Individual content owners acting as representatives for their respective departments or workgroups are often an easily accessible point-of-contact for their users. And I find that intranet users are much more likely to approach those they know in order to discuss their personal opinions of the system.

This feedback can then be relayed to the intranet team as a whole during "State of the Intranet" meetings and form the basis of future intranet upgrades. For all you know, users from different departments may have the exact sames concerns as their neighbors.

It's also important to maintain a healthy relationship between the intranet team and its users. But there's an unfortunate, and growing, problem within intranet and Internet Web sites: a lack of response to user inquires. It's extremely frustrating for users who take time to provide feedback or ask questions only to never hear back from system owners.

Don't put up a "Contact Us" page merely for the sake of appearance; users need to feel the same level of response from system owners as they do with the system itself. You should always respond to user e-mail and questions so they know there's actually a human being at the other end of the browser.

Get Organized: Reviewing the State of the Intranet

As an intranet's content and featureset expands, there may come a time when it will simple outgrow its current home — its technology, hardware, and software. And in some cases, your intranet may even outlive it's usefulness.

Technologies, businesses, and processes change, and so must your intranet. Your first inclination may be to bandage up the problem and deal with it at a later time. But this is only a temporary solution. Bandages should only be used in emergencies when reaction time is critical, and used simply to stem the tide of damage while you work toward figuring out a better long-term solution. If you were to spring a leak in your boat while out at sea, you can plug up the hole with bubble gum (or so cartoons would have us believe) until you reach the shore. But once docked, you wouldn't really consider leaving that piece of gum there as a permanent fix, would you?

Decisions that impact the long-term survival of your intranet deserve more attention and planning than simple Band-Aid solutions. You need to review the state and status of your current intranet implementation to ensure that it's still relevant to your operation — looking at both the technical as well as the non-technical issues related to intranet ownership:

Technical Issues	Non-Technical Issues
Is there enough server disk space to accommodate new content that's being added daily?	Is your intranet still relevant or is it becoming obsolete as a result of changes in business environments and processes?
Is there enough server memory and processor speed to run the intranet and its applications effectively?	Does your intranet's design and interface still reflect the ways users work?
Is your intranet based on soon-to-be defunct technologies?	Have other, newer tools (either third party software packages or in-house developed) been introduced into corporate IT that makes your intranet obsolete?
Are your security measures up-to-date and still able to protect your intranet from an ever-growing number of new threats?	Has intranet usage increased or decreased? If it's the latter, why?

Page 2: Cleaning Up Old Intranet Content...