Manage your intranet with the Governance Card Game

Jesper Bylund (writer of this article) will show how the Governance Card Game can help you achieve your intranet priorties at Intranet Now on the 7th of June in London. Look out for Jesper’s lightning talk and table talk.

When you’re responsible for an intranet, you need to be a product manager. The intranet is a product, and you and the team manage it, so the product delivers today, tomorrow, and in the future.

But what should the team actually do? What is there to manage’?

This question has been on my mind for a long time (I’ve led an intranet team for many years). I’ve also wrestled with the question about how to get the intranet owner and intranet stakeholders to better understand the work involved.

Now, I’m proud to present a tool for getting a better control of all the tasks involved — The Intranet Governance Game.

I’ve spent a lot of nights in the basement at home creating this. Inspiration has come from card sorting, tree testing, the Microsoft reaction cards, a RACI matrix, general intranet team role descriptions, some ideas from a really good book about product leadership, the card game Old Maid and Harry S Truman’s Desk sign.

The Intranet Governance Game clarifies what needs to be done when taking care of an intranet. The game consists of several game boards and 126 cards (plus six free cards). The idea is that the intranet team and the intranet owner + line manager play the game.

Every card is an intranet task

The mission is to distribute the cards (tasks) among the intranet team members. Irrelevant tasks, tasks no-one can do, or tasks that do not fit within the time available are put on the table game boards.

Cards placed on a team member’s board become the role instructions for the future intranet work.

The game makes it really obvious for the team who’s responsible for what and for the manager and owner what the team has to manage every week.

It also creates discussions about what tasks are most important, what the team can stop doing and a consensus about the team focus. And it stops the buck-passing within the intranet team!