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Home CompetenciesUniversity
of Denver
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Problem | Analysis
| Rationale | Results
| Evidence of Value | Reflections
| Responsibilities |
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| PROBLEM |
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I began working in the Training
and Development department at the University of Denver (DU)
in April of 2002. One of my tasks while working at DU was
to evaluate and update the Human Resources (HR) website. It
quickly became apparent that their website was in need of
some immediate attention. For instance, over half of the pages
had not been updated for over a year--many with inaccurate
and  outdated
content. However, while the department had contracted to have
a shell built for their new site, it was not ready when I
began working at DU. In fact, it was not released to the HR
department until after I found out that I was going to be
leaving DU to work for Regis University. Therefore, the problem
was that the HR department needed their website updated and
I had only two weeks to devote to the project. |
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| ANALYSIS |
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I quickly began to analyze the situation further. The site
was used to represent the Human Resources department. The
department consisted of three different groups: 1.Employee
Benefits, 2. Employee Services, and 3. Training and Development.
The users consisted of both current and prospective employees
of the university. The site was accessed both on and off
of campus.
In the past, the site had been updated by one member of
the HR department. It appeared that due in part to a promotion,
this person was no longer able to dedicate the needed time
to updating the site. Despite this fact, this individual
appeared unwilling to give up control of the website and
the Director of the department was unwilling to take it
away from her. Therefore, politically speaking, this was
a very complicated conundrum and time was not on my side.
I was a part-time employee working 20 hours a week for the
Training and Development division.
After analyzing the political milieu, I moved my attention
to the website, its' content, and the newly designed shell.
I became aware that even if I had complete support to move
forward with migrating the content to the new shell, most
of the content was extremely out of date and I didn't appear
to have the needed support of each group to update it in
a timely manner.
As a result, I was concerned with accomplishing the following
in my remaining two weeks at DU:
- Migrating the entire site into the new shell
- Updating the Training and Development pages content
first
- Updating as much of the remaining content as possible
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| RATIONALE |
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My first concern was finding
out how much time I had at my disposal. After meeting with
my supervisor, we discussed the possibility of doubling
my work load to 40 hours a week for the remaining time I
had at DU.
My second concern was the political situation. While I
believed I had enough time to update the entire HR website,
I needed the current webmasters blessing to move forward.
I set up a meeting with her and her assistant to demonstrate
the shell and the task at hand. I also echoed the Director's
(i.e., her bosses) desire to have us complete this project
as soon as possible. It was clear that I was going to be
in charge of updating the Training and Development pages
but it was not clear whether I would be updating the other
two groups pages. We ended the meeting with me volunteering
to update the entire site but with them still unsure whether
they wanted to let me move forward with this.
While my number one concern was concentrating on the Training
and Development pages, I wanted to leave time to work on
the rest of the site--if and when I got the go ahead to
move forward. I planned to devote 5-6 hours a day on the
Training and Development pages and the remaining time on
transferring the out of day content into the new shell.
I hoped that once the content was transferred the other
two groups would be anxious to lend a hand by updating some
content in an effort to complete this project. |
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| RESULTS |
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| In the end, I was successful
at migrating the entire site into the new shell and updating
the content in all of the Training and Development pages.
However, I was unsuccessful at updating the bulk of the
remaining content. My plan to devote part of my time to
the Training and Development pages and the remaining time
to other groups pages worked well. In fact, I believe my
rapid success with the Training and Development pages helped
convince the webmaster to release the reigns and allow me
to migrate the entire site. Despite my immediate success,
it was very frustrating working with a shell that someone
else designed and paid for because it left me very little
freedom to change things that needed to be changed (e.g.,
the following page: http://www.du.edu/hr/new_ee/index.html
has a useless link entitled "welcome").
Once I began making progress at transferring the old content
to the new shell, I printed the web pages and gave copies
to the key players in each group (i.e., Employee Benefits
and Employee Services) in hopes that they could quickly
mark changes on the print outs for me to update. In the
end though, I was only able to update about 50% of their
pages.
When my two weeks were up, the bulk of the website was
ready to go live; however, in hopes to launch a polished
product, the department waited another four weeks after
I left before launching the site live. |
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| EVIDENCE OF VALUE |
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| The evidence of value of this
project can be seen in the fact that over a year later, you
can still see where I typed "coming soon" on a number
of pages (e.g., http://www.du.edu/hr/about/fast_facts.html,
http://www.du.edu/hr/forms/newsletter.html).
The reason I find this significant is that if I believe it
is evidence of this departments lack of commitment and/or
resources to update its' website. I believe that it could
have easily taken six months or longer for this department
to accomplish what I did in two weeks--that is, move all of
the content from the old site to the new shell. Therefore,
while I was unable to technically finish the job, over 80%
of DU's HR site is still the result of the work I did in two
weeks over a year ago. |
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| REFLECTIONS |
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| This was an enlightening experience
because it was my first taste of serving as a webmaster. For
the first time I had to devise ways to organize and update
hundreds of pages of content; I quickly learned how to check
and update links site wide in Dreamweaver. I also had to find
ways to obtain buy-in from those around me. I was successful
at this at times and not so successful at other times. I believe,
though, if I had more time to spend with each group, I could
have been more successful at enlisting their aid with regards
to updating the content. It is difficult for anyone to set
a side a few hours in a busy work week when they have received
only a few days notice. I also learned that most people want
nothing to do with their departments website--however, at
the same time they often have very high expectations of it.
Finally, I learned about office politics and how out of hand
they can get. I believe this experience is what helped me
successfully work with the Regis Teacher Education faculty
during their website update. |
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| RESPONSIBILITIES |
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Responsibility #5:
Manages complex projects and resources in support of
learning
This project required careful management of the migration
process to ensure that no time was wasted so that the project
could end on time. I concentrated at first on the transition
of the Training and Development pages because I wanted to
place my supervisor's needs first. However, I knew that
if I didn't begin to dedicate some time each day to the
remaining department's pages, I would be unable to get the
needed buy-in and support to successfully complete this
project. I also updated the departments authoring software
to Dreamweaver MX to help speed up the process. Finally,
I began to train my supervisor's assistant in writing HTML
in an effort to provide her with the needed tools to continue
where I left off; I also developed a web developers guide
to highlight what still needed to be updated.
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Last Updated: July 18, 2003 |
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