I’m incredibly excited about the publication of Ruven Gotz’s new book, Practical SharePoint 2010 Information Architecture. If you’ve been fortunate enough to see Ruven speak at a conference or SharePoint Saturday event before, you know he’s a whiz at explaining metadata, leading groups through mind mapping workshops and building out quick (but effective) wireframes.

Now you can learn the details behind Ruven’s information architecture magic. He’ll walk you through the agenda and methodologies for his discovery workshops, introduce you to mind mapping and what it can do for your SharePoint projects AND explain the basics behind findability and putability, metadata and taxonomy, etc.

Ruven was one of the first SharePoint experts I started following on Twitter. And when I got the chance to meet him at the 2009 Best Practices Conference, I was elated. From the get-go, Ruven and I shared a common information architecture world view. We believe in the power of analyzing content, involving end-users in the requirements gathering process and leveraging SharePoint as a case for effective change management.

When Ruven confided that he had committed to writing this book, I was thrilled. I knew he’d do a fantastic job turning his popular conference sessions into a guide for kick-starting SharePoint projects. I was a bit more trepidatious when Ruven called and asked me to contribute a chapter to the book, though…

After some discussion, I opted to focus my chapter on The Art of Creating Business Process Solutions. This chapter provides a holistic view of SharePoint as a business process re-engineering tool. It outlines the “universal truths” that will help you relate to your business users, exposes the “forgotten layer of content management” that exists at most organizations, guides you through the search for your alpha project and describes how you can measure the Return On Investment (ROI) of your new solutions. Consider it a “couch-to-success” plan for building effective business process solutions.

I’m incredibly proud to be a part of this book. For more information on the book, author bios, reader reviews, etc., check us out on Amazon. And don’t forget to visit the book’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PracticalSPIA.