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

[John O'Donovan-INTERNET]

Shhhh...don't tell anyone, but I'm a consultant as well...

There are a lot of consultants who will work on a time and materials basis then walk away when the allocated budget is used up. Quality of deliverable in the customers eyes is hard to quantify at the start of the project so there can be difficulty in agreeing satisfactory signoff.

For me (as possibly for you?) one of the biggest issues is that the CMS is not procured with enough knowledge of business issues by groups in the customers organisation who have no in depth understanding of analysis and why it is so important to do your business and systems analysis. People draw up wireframes and think they have a system design. 

The question is where the onus of responsibility lies - should the customer do this or should the consultants / vendor do this to ensure the customer has done it correctly?

Another issue is you need to really understand what the customer within the customer want. This means don't just please the IT department - you need to deliver successfully to the business user that the IT department is supporting. Too often the real requirements get muddled up in the interactions here and don't come out until after dark...

The issues can also get muddled because the CMS may require you to re-configure servers and web servers and perhaps change your whole hosting infrastructure. Just to get the thing running can be a mammoth task for the IT department and their concerns are not the same as those of the users who are the justification for the CMS.

Cheers,

jod


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