[Sigia-l] the environment of CMS

[David Heller]

It seems to me that most people on this list are not involved in
software development, but rather work either as consultants or part of
in-house IT development. I think this is something that generally
separates the IA community from the CHI community a bit. It is an
artificial separation, but one that leads to many presumptions about how
software is created. Yes, this is a generalization of the list, so
please don't feel the need to let me know that you are an exception.

CMS software in particular as Victor has noted is very immature. In the
lifecycle of software it is probably a generation or two between
structured data software like Oracle database applications, SAP, Siebel
and PeopleSoft. Our companies are a lot smaller than all of these and
our technology is a lot less standardized and mature. We are learning
and innovating all the time. CMS software is also over-generalized so
that ePrise and red-dot are put in the same boat as Documentum,
Interwoven, Stellant and Vignette. Then, if you noticed I only listed
companies known for their WCM solutions. But WCM is a tiny piece of the
CMS market. Companies like Documentum, Open Text, FileNet, etc. are much
more about document management, repository management and collaboration
than they are about WCM. They just think of WCM as a special solution
for a niche market. Of course we all know this market is huge and
fractured and quite variable. This being said that if you think of CMS
in general as 2 generations behind data management systems, then you can
say more specifically that WCM is a generation behind that.

Lots of initial mistakes have been made and not for the reasons that all
of you have been talking about. Its not b/c its engineering driven, or
that we haven't spoken to customers. My, do we talk to customers all the
time! It is that customers are as new to all this as we are. Oracle has
2 decades of taking their product from their initial assumptions to fine
tune it against customer feedback. To get feedback you have to have
product, revise, have new product, get feedback, revise, etc. etc.

Like I said CMS companies are not the Behemoths of structured data
management listed above. Our offices are in the same town as PeopleSoft
and Sybase, and let me tell you they don't take up nearly as much space.
This means less resources and less scope space for implementing as many
changes as we know about at any given time.

No excuses really, it is just reality. We would all like to be perfect
now, but I can't just create something completely new w/o having a real
migration path for my previous customers. I have a responsibility to
them and I must make sure that what I do now doesn't destroy what I did
before.

Anyway, the problem isn't knowledge or interest or specific focuses. The
problem is that we are new, and you expect us to be like Oracle and SAP
and Microsoft and we are not. 

-- dave

Ps. In this specific case more than any other, my opinions are my own
and do not reflect anything about Documentum, its subsidiaries, partners
or customers. 

David Heller
Sr. User Interface Designer
Documentum: The Leader in Enterprise Content Management
925.600.5636
 
david.heller at documentum.com
http://www.documentum.com/
AIM: bolinhanyc  //  Yahoo: dave_ux  //  MSN: hippiefunk at hotmail.com
 
--"If it isn't useful, it will never be usable."