Managing Chaos: Digital Governance by Design

by Lisa Welchman

Few organizations realize a return on their digital investment. They’re distracted by political infighting and technology-first solutions. To reach the next level, organizations must realign their assets—people, content, and technology—by practicing the discipline of digital governance. Managing Chaos inspires new and necessary conversations about digital governance and its transformative power to support creativity, real collaboration, digital quality, and online growth.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Business, Technology, Leadership, Management, Web

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Bry Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book on Web and Internet governance. In an approachable manner, Lisa shares with the reader her decades of experience in this area. She sounds like a strong and qualified person to have on a governance project. If you need a pep talk and some case studies or reinforcement for the concept, or you need to tighten up your own governance, this is worth the read. Buy a couple copies for sharing.

My only disappointment was in her use of the word in the subtitle: Digital Governance by Design. Although she gives a slight nod to Intranets and Social Media, by and large this book is about Internet Governance: It covers infrastructure, editorial creation, content publication, taxonomy, analytics, and so on, but Digital is bigger than the Web, and it is bigger than Mobile. It is also about knowledge sharing and and the integration of corporate systems with Web systems or not. It's about connecting customer service agents with sales reps. It's about connecting Web clients to a customer system. It's about automating processes, creating the right organisational structure, and hiring the right people. It's about putting the right incentives in place to promote adoption. I wish Lisa had touched on the broader definition of Digital.

All of this said, I still highly recommend this book.

[Alex Sprenger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book during my master's degree, "Content Strategy", which was super insightful. We had a course on "Digital Governance(*)" and the book accompanied me during that course.
The concepts are simple to follow but feel overwhelming at the same time. It becomes clear how complex digital products can become (or any product really?), and implementing a project seems like a massive undertaking. However, with her conversational and encouraging writing style, the author manages to take some of this fear away. She gives rich insights into a well-designed governance model. And in the end, that is what determines success or failure. So, if you are looking for some digital governance advice, Lisa Welchman and her book are the sources to turn to.

*with Lisa Welchman, by the way :)

[Rebekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of the most helpful books I ever read. It shed light on frustrations in previous work places and helped me figure out what I wanted in future employment. I absolutely loved Welchman's voice and it made a topic that some might think boring incredibly engaging.

[Mateusz · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not really helping me in convincing people to care about digital presence. It's too rough and out of context to use as examples in discussion but overall, the book is solid if you're an expert that knows the terminology and processes.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential guide to creating website governance policies and documents. I did a workshop with Lisa Welchman while she was writing this book, and lives up to the promise of that in-person training. Yay!

[Becca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book! Very informative - with numerous useful tips for anyone having to deal with or handle digital governance.

[Julia Kulgavchuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, the book gives specific tools and methods for digital governance, but this is not what makes it stand out to me. What makes the book fascinating is that while giving a glimpse of insane complexity of organisations and their dynamics, it also shows the beauty of it. This world of big messy organisations with their legacy issues suddenly shines with bright colors like the book cover. The book is written in a beautiful version of corporate lingo, the one that reads like poetry. I feel like reading it again from the beginning just after I finished.

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the few books on Website Governance

This is an excellent book on web & content governance. I looked hard for one that covered the sites themselves, and not just content - very hard to find.

There is so much I want to pull out of this book and immediately implement.

Highly recommended.

[Iacobien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Artikel dat ik over de boek en het onderwerp schreef vind je op http://uxbookclubarnhemdeventer.nl/ar...

[Rahel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Every company should have a well-thumbed copy of this in plain sight.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent discussion of collaborative heirarchies for digital governance.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, but its for managers not designers.