a thousand furnished rooms

Even though there are plenty of content management systems that have been installed, I still fear that there are not enough successful, mature implementations out there. Too often projects have bogged down, stopping short of completion. Either not all the features have been implemented, not all the content has been digitized and placed under management, or not all the users have been equipped with tools to begin managing their content. The result? A lack of critical mass, and a system that falls well short of its business goals.

So it's worth considering the big questions—what is the purpose of the system? What is the scope of initial project, and what is the long-range vision for the system? What will constitute success, and how will you measure it?

Rita Warren has an excellent perspective on the business implications of implementing content management technology; her presentation at Seybold last year was one of the most useful of the conference. Rita has provided the following abstract for this year's presentation, which she has titled, "The Artful Balancing Act of Choosing a CMS."

Abstract
(Courtesy of Rita Warren, ZiaContent)

It's human nature to want to jump right in on a project and see tangible results. In the case of a content management project, one of the first ways to see progress is to say "look, we've bought this software." It's not surprising then, that many organizations make software product selection the first milestone of their content management initiative. What they may not realize, however, that is the real progress on the project occurs when you get a solid grip on the business issues that are driving the need for content management, a vision for what the future state of your managed content will look like, and a clear understanding of the budgetary and technical constraints that will necessarily limit your CMS choices.

Opposite on the spectrum of the CMS "impulse buy" is the tendency to fall into analysis paralysis, spending so much time figuring out what the problems are, that you never actually get to a solution. The truth is, there are some very basic business problems that content management can help solve. By looking at your content management business goals relative to core CMS functionality, it's fairly easy to nail down a set of criteria that will streamline the software selection process. The key to successfully planning and choosing a CMS is to balance the time spent on business analysis with the software due diligence effort, while minimizing risk.

This session will be held on Tuesday, September 9 at the Moscone Conference Center in San Francisco.

Click here to register for the conference.

Bill Trippe
btrippe@nmpub.com