With most website projects, there are two main stakeholders: the organization and the users.

With archipelago projects, there are three groups of stakeholders: an umbrella organization, its subsidiaries, and the end-users they both serve. This triangle adds a lot of tension. In many cases, the subsidiaries hold sway over the umbrella organization (the university library commands a bigger budget and more prestige than the marketing department, for example).

As a result, the umbrella organization spends more time responding to the subsidiary needs than to the needs of end-users, and it loses focus on who the real audience is. Universities never send out RFPs with the primary goal stated as “We need to primarily design this site for tenured staff and the departments that bring in the most money from alumni.”

But this ends up being the goal for many university website projects.

Success in this environment means meeting the needs of these internal users before you can even get to the business of serving any other audience.