[Sigia-l] Content Management Implementations

[paula.thornton]

While I've done my fair share of beating up David offline (I have a 'thing'
for vendor blood), there are some issues that have been alluded to in some
of the recent comments that I believe bear repeating with emphasis, that are
not focused on tool shortcomings.

There certainly are a number of issues related to the often underestimated
effort required to 'shape' tools to the needs (we still live in a world
where fundamentally companies still insist on shaping the recipients to the
solution...see my latest gripe at
http://www.iknovate.com/archives/000012.html). And it has been raised that
often the requirements have not been researched sufficiently or that a
strategy has been put in place. It has also been raised that there are
cultural change issues to be addressed. All of this said, there are details
are still missing from this message as to how the implementation effort
itself contributes to the failure.

Pipe up anyone else who has been on an implementation, but implementation
projects are still fundamentally driven by deadlines first and project plans
are worked backward to fit the space. I've not seen one CMS implementation
that was given more than 6 months implementation time (on their 'first'
try). Yet, realistically, for what most of the projects I've been involved
with were trying to accomplish -- total corporate content management -- it
would have been nearly unrealistic to allow less than 6 months just for the
requirements phase. No, I'm not suggesting that 6 months is realistic when
work has to go on, but I am suggesting that a 6-month requirements analysis
effort should continuously parallel an implementation and continuously
'change' the requirements with new findings.

People who believe that requirements can be 'fixed' are delusional.
Requirements can only be 'versioned'. Businesses do not sit still. Change is
a reality. Yet we have disciplines/methods that attempt to ignore this
reality. Our methods have to change...reality is a given.

Take a look at most IT implementation plans. How are the percentages
allocated to various activities? What percentage is allocated to change
management activities? Resources allocated to these tasks should be part of
the requirements team and should begin laying the groundwork for change as
each 'issue' is identified during the early research. I've only been on one
project that included change management resources. It was a CMS project, but
the project was mothballed for a few months. When it was resurrected, the
only resources reallocated were technical ones. And the change management
people were off on their own...they were not involved in the requirements
process.

We need to begin to influence methods at their core. These issues we are
raising are not specific to CMS implementations. We're just noticing them
because of the level of complexity and the more obvious 'failure' in CMS
implementations. The failure in other implementations has been there all
along...just quite unnoticed.

Paula Thornton
Interaction Design Strategist
www.iknovate.com