Business changes create taxonomy changes, but what happens when the business needs to maintain both the old taxonomy and the new one? This session examines an enterprise making large, structural changes to its organizational structure taxonomy after a major business pivot. Updating the organizational structure taxonomy is important for business operations and analytics, while the company also needs to map back to the previous structure for historical analytics and budget tracking purposes. Even more challenging, the mapping needs to be human-readable and accessible, while allowing for possible future automation. Learn how to balance business needs and limitations with best-practice principles, and how to devise a process for mapping the updated structure back to the previous one. 

Speaker: Erik Lee

Erik has been a library enthusiast since he was old enough to read. As a child, he would regularly make the half-hour walk to his local library branch on weekends and spend the day there. His interest and love of libraries led him to obtain a Master’s degree in Library Science from the University of North Texas while still working full-time at Zappos, where he wore many hats in their world-famous customer service department. His career as a taxonomist also began at Zappos, where a meeting with their taxonomy team turned into a new role.

Working and speaking directly with customers has reinforced Erik’s love of helping people in finding what they need and getting to their goals. Erik also enjoys doing research and learning. As a taxonomist, Erik has worked on projects for social media, library services, and natural resources companies, and presented at conferences.

Erik lives in Las Vegas with his family. He enjoys weird, cult, arthouse, and horror films and books. He’s also a big fan of tabletop roleplaying games, if he can find the time these days. Erik still goes to the library often, bringing his kids with him. He currently works for Factor, a human-centric information architecture firm.