Carolyn Clarke
Corporate Webmaster
Carolyn is the corporate webmaster for EDF Energy, which is a British company owned by the French energy company EDF. She has responsibility for the corporate website and also for the company's intranet, both on the strategic and day-to-day levels, liaising with the web administrators within the company's four main divisions.
Her previous positions were with the office of the e-Envoy, a Government ministry, with Knight Frank, a large international property and real estate partnership, and at the International Petroleum Exchange, working as a web manager or webmaster. Carolyn's very own website went up in 1998.
Carolyn's background is in publishing in London and in academia. She has a D. Phil from Oxford University (medieval history), and previous degrees from Canadian universities. Carolyn is born in Canada, but has lived in the UK since 1980. Carolyn is a published novelist and writer, and does some freelance work creating and maintaining websites for small charities.
Taking a Snowball through Hell: The politics of governance, decision-making, and ownership
Wednesday, November 8th, 11.00
Category: Intermediate
Track: Strategy
Case: EDF Energy
Redeveloping a website for a large company is never easy. It seems easier to take a snowball through hell than to get the website you want through a redevelopment process. Unhappy website projects tend to share characteristics, and these can be identified.
The standard problems are: Website or the website redevelopment project is owned by the wrong person or group, the project has a fuzzy or semi-fictional governance structure, and decision-making within the project is done on those "enemies of promise": Pride, fear, ineptitude, bewilderment, ignorance, impatience and despair.
You can get you closer to the customer-focused, user-friendly website you want by understanding the politics of the parties involved. Appreciating their motivation and basing your own position on factual evidence are the keys to successful snowball transport.
But since there is no cure for all the inherent problems in the redevelopment of a website, you - as the project manager or owner - have to choose which problems you will address and which you will only manage. Some issues can be left to drip, but some have melting points that, if reached, will destroy the project. How to know which ones to address, and with what level of urgency? Is there an identifiable set of mission-critical issues, and is there any way to get that snowball through to the other side?
Joint session with case presented by Henrik Sørensen from Danske Bank-Group.
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