Enterprise Search, 2nd Edition

Chapter 8. Search Governance

This chapter is arguably the most important in this book. No matter how good the search technology and how closely it meets user requirements, without an appropriate level of investment in the search support team, the chances of continuing to meet the requirements of the organization and the individual requirements of users are going to be close to zero. My main objective in writing this book was to get this message across as clearly as possible.

Implementing search should never be “a project.” The work of ensuring that users continue to have high levels of search satisfaction will never come to a close. Each week, and perhaps even most days, there will be something that needs attention. The role of the search support team is not just to be reactive, but to anticipate when changes to the search application need to be made, or to identify a training requirement that will address an issue that is just starting to show up on the search logs and user satisfaction surveys.

Who Should Own Search?

Answering the question “Who should own search?” is never easy. The first issue is defining what is meant by ownership. There will certainly be an important IT element in the budget, but the purpose of enterprise search is to enhance performance across the entire organization. All other enterprise applications that support business processes, such as finance, HR, asset management, and customer relationship management are owned by the department that would be unable ...