At the SHARE conference in Australia last year, I finally got to meet Ruven Gotz. I knew of him, but SHARE 2011 was the first time I met him in person. I attended and blogged his closing keynote – Effective SharePoint Workshops – and many of the approaches he advocated rang true with my approach to the same issues. Not talking about software features and running “discovery workshops” to uncover pain, for example, are right on the money. And then I got to meet him again in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, at SHARE 2012. Twice in five months is good.

Well, Ruven’s been working on a book, and it’s now out: Practical SharePoint 2010 Information Architecture:

“If you are responsible for any of the business side of implementing SharePoint, then I hope you will find material in this book that will be of value to you. This book captures both tools and approaches that I have found to be successful.

The first chapter talks about some of the soft-skills that you need to cultivate to be a successful business analyst (BA) or information architect (IA). I then dive into the key tools that really help with engaging the client, getting to shared understanding and shared commitment. These tools include: Mind Manager, Balsamiq, BizAgi, Visio and Compendium.

Topics include: taxonomy, navigation, search, business process, governance, adoption and training.

When I planned this book, I did not want to write a giant reference book that a reader would dip into when researching a particular topic. At only about 250 pages, I hope that people will try to read it all the way through in a just a few days, getting a holistic idea of an approach that can help them to become better practitioners. Most of the tools can be learned very quickly, and they start to provide value right away. I look forward to hearing how people use the book and where it provides value to them.“

Congrats Ruven – well done.

I just ordered my copy from The Book Depository.