Getting web governance right isn’t easy. It is likely that you will have to experiment with a few different approaches before it finally takes hold. And that isn’t such a bad thing.

My user experience colleagues sometimes refer to the principle of iterative design. This is based on the knowledge that few websites are 100% perfect when they launch. They’ll always need ongoing tweaks.

Successful websites recognise this by investing in skilled staff. Such staff combine insights from analytics and user feedback with their own expertise, to build progressively better experiences.

Governance requires a similar iterative approach

No governance system – no matter how well designed – will be 100% right when implemented. What can seem a great idea during planning simply may not work in practice.

And here is a perfect example:

This shows an update schedule for a small firm’s website (that will remain anyonymous). It was pinned to the wall of a supervisor’s office.

The schedule shows a start date of 2005 and a final entry from February 2006. It is now 2010 (perhaps no one has the heart to remove it from the wall).

Success or failure?

This schedule is an artefact of a procedure that didn’t work or is no longer needed. Because I know that the website concerned is well maintained, it shows that the business has moved on.

Perhaps they found that the paper-based approach did not work. Perhaps they migrated to a CMS system. It is tempting to think that this photo shows a governance failure, but that is too simplistic.

It shows trial, error and development. It shows governance ‘in the wild.’