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

[Beth Mazur]

Peter Merholz wrote:
>In fact, I would argue that the main reason that CM tools fail is not
>because of some inherent problem with content management, but because
>businesses do a poor job of understanding their own requirements.

To which there is a lot (but not universal) nodding. Is it me, or does 
there seem to be a lack of commentary from businesses who have 
experienced either success or failure?

Well, (she says bravely), I'll step forward. 

My theory is that the biggest problem with CMS implementations is
that they fall under the category of what has been called wicked
problems. Wicked problems are those where "each attempt to create 
a solution changes the understanding of the problem." See 
http://www.cognexus.org/id29.htm for more ...in particular, I
love this: 

       One factor that increases the wickedness of a problem is the 
       number and diversity of stakeholders involved. 

In our third try (which was obviously very informed by our first two
catastrophes), we felt we had really stated the requirements fairly
well. In addition, we had decided to implement only the smallest
set of features needed to try and avoid the dreaded feature creep.
And best yet, we kept the stakeholders to a bare minimum.

But even with the effort we put into it, it was only after we had
a prototype and spent some time using it that *new* requirements
became apparent. Was this feature creep? Maybe. But it may also
have been an inability of the client or the vendor to abstract into
the future what this complex application might really need to be. 
And from my perspective, CMS applications for large organizations 
(mine anyways) are fairly complex, for all sorts of reasons.

Beth Mazur
IDblog: http://idblog.org