Intranet renewal for Province of Antwerp

Preparatory trajectory

In line with its strategy, the Province of Antwerp goes all-in to accommodate result-oriented cooperation between its employees, including digital. In support of this the Province of Antwerp has an initiative for the creation of projects that support communication, digital teamwork, and access to tools and documents. Using a digital workplace employees should always have access to the tools and information they need. Also when using mobile devices.

 

This gives employees the opportunity of greater efficiency, which in turn has positive outcomes for employee satisfaction. We supported the Province of Antwerp in researching to what extent a renewal of the intranet was necessary, and how to implement this renewal in a structured manner. A preparatory trajectory was developed, with its main goal to develop a supported plan of approach to give guidance to possible future intranet projects. An incremental approach was chosen that would have a final delivery in three phases.

 

Phase 1: insight

​In the first phase the necessary steps were taken to gain insight in the current situation. Analyses were made of (1) intranet satisfaction surveys, (2) intranet usage statistics, and (3) lessons-learned results of the previous trajectory. An organizational image was made, and stakeholders were mapped. Everything was brought together, trends were added, after which a vision and intranet project goals were worked out. This then was presented as a whole to the preparatory trajectory advisory committee. They gave permission to start the second phase.

 

Phase 2: processing and workshopping

In the second phase the gained feedback was processed and intranet needs were uncovered via workshops with “typical employees of the Province of Antwerp” (personas). The obtained insights were synthesized and translated to high level requirements. Multiple very specific “deep dives” were set up with experts to map the dependencies of other initiatives. Next to that, an as-is and to-be image of information flows was created. Meanwhile, risks, bottlenecks and assumptions were mapped, and action was taken wherever already possible. When this was not yet possible, this was marked so a potential future project was able to tackle it.

 

Phase 3: scenarios

All elements were brought together in the third and final phase, in which scenarios and their specific advantages and disadvantages were worked out. To really finish the end product a playbook was created. In the playbook a collection of typical project management artifacts can be found, which will provide a head start whenever it is decided to launch a future intranet project.

 

In this case a starter was made for a first version of a roadmap, quality plan, project organization, project follow-up, exception process, cooperation platform, and change management plan. Based on the delivered work, the management team was able to make an informed decision for taking follow-up steps.