Departmental autonomy

How much freedom should departments or units of a corporation have in developing their site? The answer is... It depends. Usually, a corporation with a strong brand will not have to worry about this problem. All sub-sites will actually want to be the same look and feel because it is to their advantage. The same cannot be said about organizations that have a culture of decentralization, where the various units are run almost independently from each other. However, it is possible to have a site that is very much homogeneous in look and feel, but the content is not so harmonious. This happens regardless of the strength of the brand. In a nutshell, my preference is to give departments room to explore how they can use the Web to communicate to their constituents, but keep them in line with a strong publishing methodology and guidelines.