[Sigia-l] Estimating content analysis & migration

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

Hi Daniela,

 I don't know whether the following is helpful in your case, but we recently
used a somewhat experimental approach to some of the content issues you
describe. It turned out to be pretty good: allowing us to build a content
inventory as a by-product of the work of re-designing a site's IA and
graphic design, while not having to worry too much about the CMS. The client
wanted us to use the "same content" (spread across various content types)
but obviously we needed to audit and re-jig this so that it would suit the
new design.  

So, we used a Freehand document to record which page "modules" appeared on
each page template; an Excel spreadsheet then listed all pages on the site
(and also captured the taxonomy we wanted them to conform to) and recorded
which templates and modules appeared on them. Each page was then produced as
an XML file via a schema which described the properties of the module
designs (e.g. a module would contain a title, text, drop-down menu and one
or more links). The resulting pages were then editable with MS Word (2003)
and populated with content by editors using a web-based version control
system. The resulting XML was then be transformed into whatever format was
required (e.g. HTML, PDF layouts, SQL statements, etc.). True, this stage
was time-consuming, being essentially a copy/paste fest, but we had enough
people on the job for it to go reasonably quickly. The Word files could also
be passed around over email, or even printed out and filled in by those that
were so inclined!

More importantly from your point of view perhaps, the system allowed us to
quantify exactly what content was needed quite early on in the process. For
example, by the time we had the first cut of the taxonomy and the
spreadsheet, we knew that we were going to have to generate 200 summaries of
existing documents, and could tell exactly what new content needed to be
created in other areas, even to the approximate word count etc. Over time,
we could also get some rough management information about the content
generation process - for example the system could tell us that 35% of all
the content needed for a certain area of the site had been loaded into the
Word files. The PM liked that aspect of it! Word also allowed us to validate
input to a certain extent (e.g. throwing an error if the user hadn't put
some required content in, or had exceeded a word limit, etc.)

It was a bit more complicated than that, and I'm going from memory, but if
you want I can give you some further details.

Jonathan



> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] 
> On Behalf Of daniela meleo
> Sent: 08 July 2004 14:13
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Estimating content analysis & migration
> 
> I'm helping estimate some of the tasks for a planned content 
> migration / content management project.  I've checked the 
> wiki and this list, but couldn't find much specifically on estimating.
> 
> There are about 3000 pages of content (don't ask me how long 
> a "page" is...of course I don't yet have that level of detail! )
> 
> The tasks in scope include analysing content and determining 
> content types for input to a CMS; determining the level of 
> content "cleansing" required to migrate from the previous 
> system to the new templates; liaising with subject matter 
> experts to review & approve final content; importing the 
> content into the new CMS; defining the workflow process and 
> display rules etc for the content. The site is being revamped 
> to better handle new and changed product info to help 
> customers locate, choose and order products.
> 
> I haven't had any hands-on experience in a project like this 
> -- any tips on where to start & expected productivity or 
> useful estimating metrics for this sort of work would be most 
> helpful. 
> 
> thanks..
> 
> =====
> Daniela Meleo
> IBM Australia, BCS User Experience
> 
> 
> 		
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