|
Some IT projects -- like Web-based WildFinder at WWF (known as the World Wildlife Fund) -- require CIOs to think like marketing execs and manage like CEOs. "I viewed WildFinder as a business problem that evolved into a technical implementation," says WWF CIO Greg Smith. The nonprofit agency, which had $126 million in U.S. revenue last year, wanted to showcase its intellectual property: a comprehensive ecoregional database that took WWF scientists 10 years to build.
The goal was to allow Web users to drill into a country, continent -- or the Great Sandy-Tanami desert -- to get species information and images in real time. "It needed to be graphical, text driven, table oriented -- and look great," Smith recalls. To get the job done, Smith formed an eight-person team with members from IT, Web development, conservation research and marketing.
Then he issued a methodology and project framework that forced even the most creative minds to get regular reality checks. "A lot of technology projects fail because the requirements are not specific enough,"says Smith, whose first book, Straight to the Top: Becoming a World-Class CIO, was published this spring. The WildFinder project took nine months, and today the WildFinder link is among the most popular features on the site (www.worldwildlife.org). Users can find out anything they want to know about the Spiny-Cheeked Honeyeater, the Desert Death Adder or that beloved WWF icon, the panda bear.
Problem solved.
Ellen O'Brien, a former senior editor at CIO Decisions, is now a senior editor at Storage magazine. Write to her at eobrien@techtarget.com.
|
 |
|
|
