Common Concerns

While a fully integrated ontology across your organization has tremendous benefits, the ontology does not have to be fully deployed for benefits to accrue.

The ontology can be deployed locally to deliver great benefits for very specific teams while isolating the rest of your organization from any change or impact.

If properly implemented the adoption of the six W's on topology should be nearly invisible to most in your organization.

While every organization is unique, and every team within a group has their own idiosyncrasies, all organizations share the same basic audience relationship needs and utilize the same basic set of tools to meet those needs. This creates great opportunities to repurpose and reuse ideas and methods, avoiding the effort and risk of building custom solutions from scratch.

The 6W's ontology is a universal framework that delivers the benefits of a shared ontology while still enabling customization where it is needed and warranted.

If properly implemented, the 6Ws ontology can show positive benefits at every step of implementation. Any effort in will receive a corresponding higher value out.

In addition, the value deliverd can increase while effort and expense decrease as each new implementation builds on the previous set.

While an “all at once” approach to deployment can be taken, it is not recommended. Incremental deployment decreases effort and risk and breaks the amount of change the organization must work through into manageable chunks.

An organization’s ontology is never finished, because organizations are constantly changing and evolving. If implemented correctly, the ontology can actually help the organization react to and deploy the changes an organization will face.

While some tools and technologies will likely need to be acquired to properly manage and govern an ontology, the solution can’t be bought. The work required and value derived from an ontology is the description of each organization’s offerings and approach to providing those offerings. That kind of insight and understanding does not come off a shelf.

The good news is, most organizations know how their offerings and operations better than anyone else. It is mostly a matter of making the effort to write down what what you know in way that aligns with the 6W's ontology.

It doesn't have to be. The ontology is not intended to replace entire systems and processes, but to translate your existing systems and processes into universally shared and recognized terms and terminology. The ontology can exist outside of your current workflow and processes.

That said most organizations eventually see value in modifying their existing systems and workflows to align with the 6W ontology as the ontology becomes widely used.

Once the benefit and costs associated with integration are understood ,investments in technology configuration and change management may be desired.