I am new - just found the Johnny.Decimal system yesterday. I have done a lot of reading and searching prior to trying to set up my own system. I have some questions on index setup that I hope people can help me with.
I am in charge of Data Governance for my division.
I manage a 4 person team (with the plan to grow). I am planning on setting up 20-29 Data Governance Team. I originally had this layout:
But I am concerned with how to manage it if I go beyond 7 team members.
I also considered creating 21 Team Management, and then sliding each team Member under that with their own folders for the topics listed.
I would appreciate feedback on these two setups.
I am managing data governance for our division, which covers the topics of Data Destruction, Data Retention, Data De-identification, Data Mastering, among other topics. I am also working across a number of different business units and products where we will be covering those topics above for each product. Is it better to set up by the topics listed above, and then have each product underneath, or is it better to set up by BU/Product and have each topic underneath? Often I will have discussions that overlap the topics, but stay within a BU/Product, so I am thinking of going more along this line.
for #1, if I read your layout correctly, it seems like you haven’t quite got the ‘level’ right yet. 20-29 Data Governance Team is an area in your screenshot, and then each team member gets it’s own category. But probably each team member should be an ID, or even be a subfolder in an ID. I think that’s what you mean with the second option.
As for your second question, I think it depends on what your level of involvement across business units is. Are these like customers to your team? Then it would make sense to me to treat each BU/Product as an entity, and have a standard set of folders in those for each of the topics you help them with. But if your work is primarily internal to your team, and other units come to you with ad hoc questions, it might make more sense to have the topics be the top level, and have the discussions with business units be nested or even relegated to their own section (a log of external discussions you’ve had).
@hans thank you for that feedback - I see what you are saying for #1, and that is a bit of a twist from how I was thinking about it, but actually matches up with how I currently sort things, so that wouldn’t be too bad
For #2, I am really torn because I work generally in some of those topics (division wide), but also specifically with BU/Product groups on those same topics. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to keep it by topic (Data Destruction), and then have each BU/Product have their own ID. But then I am trying to figure out how to sort out (and keep track of) the stuff under that - SOPs, Meeting Notes (kept in OneNote), Presentations, etc.
Get yourself a subfolder template! I don’t have a specific page – need to fix that – but this is the idea.
I like using folders numbered 10 … 90 for this, per that example. This fits the general JD pattern:
Limits you* to 9 things.
Keeps things in your order vs. the alphabet.
*But actually allows you to slip things in, e.g. use 15, if you forgot something.
The trick is to actually create this as a set of empty folders. Then just copy/paste them across to each ID that needs them. You can delete any you’re not using in that ID, but I tend to just leave them there.
More general advice when thinking about your setup: use a mind map. It’s so much quicker to move stuff around and you can really see your structure. And don’t rush it. This looks good and interesting and worthwhile: so if it takes a couple of weeks to get right, that’s okay.
And of course paste your mind maps here and keep asking us questions.
