It’s always good to have someone on staff at a client site when working on the analysis phase of a taxonomy project. It used to be unheard of, but now it’s becoming more the norm to have at least one person in the room from a client’s staff who knows the importance of a taxonomy (or two or three…).
We used to depend on a staff librarian or metadata manager (rare, I know) to be sitting at the table to help us explain what we’re doing on a taxonomy project. Now, guys from the IT department are chiming in on how critical taxonomies are, and how the business teams (marketing, SEO, analytics, HR, etc.) can really benefit from creating and using a taxonomy.
SharePoint 2010 is mostly to “blame” for this trend, but also the marketplace in general is wising up to the competitive advantages taxonomy can bring.
