[Sigia-l] "Study: Content Management Tools Fail"

[Listera]

"Christina Wodtke" wrote:

>>> Well, going a step forward, without placing the "blame" squarely
>>> where it belongs, the individuals (and the organization as a whole)
>>> don't learn.
> 
> Have you been part of purchasing such a tool?

Many times.

> Some companies are decent, but many were hucksters.

We don't need to confuse the ability of an organization (or an IT director)
to properly evaluate a product against a set of requirements with the
contractual failure of a vendor.

In the former case, you need to know and define what you want well and then
test, let me repeat that, test the product against the criteria. You can
test it yourself, rely on others' evaluations when appropriate and reliable,
hire a consultant or a lab to do it for you, etc. Whatever you do, you just
don't take the word of a vendor. If it's important to you, you test it. Much
of this is not rocket science, it's a matter of due diligence.

In the latter case, the vendor may fail to fulfill a contract, which is a
different sort of issue. There may be many reasons as to why a vendor may do
that and some of that cannot really be tested or foreseen.

In any case, my point has been that a failure, especially a sizeable one, is
a spectacular opportunity for an organization to learn. And a post mortem is
an absolutely necessary part of dealing with that. Put the blame where it
belongs and deal with it.

If a vendor says "Sure, this system will scale easily" and when you switch
from 50 to 500 users the product falls apart, who do you blame? The vendor?
Well go ahead and sue them, but that's usually ineffective and often a waste
of time. It's a much better strategy to have an IT director who can actually
evaluate a product (say, for scalability) in the first place. Or fire the
one who signed the check without a proper evaluation.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba