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

Todd R.Warfel lists at messagefirst.com
Thu Feb 27 19:49:13 EST 2003


Non-sense.

It is part of the Vendor (consultant)'s job to understand the client's 
needs and requirements. There's a reason that part of the design cycle 
is requirements gathering. You have this in phase one of your 
development cycle. We have requirements gathering as part of phase two 
in the DIVE © process (Investigation and Definition).

Vendors and consultants who aren't doing requirements gathering 
properly aren't keeping up their end. The reason companies typically 
hire consultants are:
1) to do something they can't
2) to do something they don't want to do
3) to settle some internal political discussion

It's not the client's job to know what they need. It's the consultant's 
job to help the client figure out what their needs are. If you can't 
help the client figure this out, then you either shouldn't be doing it, 
or should find someone else who can.

And we should be able to expect the sales force to do what it takes to 
sell the product. Likewise, clients need to be smarter about their 
decisions and do a better job evaluating various vendors.

On Thursday, February 27, 2003, at 07:30 PM, Peter Merholz wrote:

> You could blame the vendor for the failing ("You should have known we 
> didn't
> know what we were talking about!"), but that's foolish. If you expect 
> the
> vendor's sales force to do anything other than the minimum to sell the
> product, well, I've got a very nice bridge I'd like to sell you.

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel

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Information architecture
Interaction design
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[E]  twarfel at messagefirst.com
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In theory, theory and practice are the same,
but in practice, they're not -- anonymous




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