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

[Patrick Neeman]

Agreed.

We can sit here and talk about how the client didn't document their needs correctly, or they didn't understand the market, but at
the end of the day, when the client realizes that they spent a lot of money on a tool that doesn't do anything for them (and this is
>any< tool, not just a CMS), the vendor is going to take the blame.

The client is never, ever, ever at fault, even if they are at fault (that's consultant rule number 1, i think).

That said, those on the list who do work for CMS companies should take a step back and figure out what market segment they are
missing, because they must be missing something if articles like this come out, and I would think it would do a better service for
this group to say "you know what, maybe we have a product here that isn't meeting the needs of our users," instead of the current
thread of "well, the client doesn't understand it, so they must be doing something wrong."

P@


> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
> Todd R.Warfel
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 4:49 PM
> To: Peter Merholz
> Cc: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] "Study: Content Management Tools Fail"
>
>
> Non-sense.
>
> It is part of the Vendor (consultant)'s job to understand the client's
> needs and requirements. There's a reason that part of the design cycle
> is requirements gathering. You have this in phase one of your
> development cycle. We have requirements gathering as part of phase two
> in the DIVE © process (Investigation and Definition).
>
> Vendors and consultants who aren't doing requirements gathering
> properly aren't keeping up their end. The reason companies typically
> hire consultants are:
> 1) to do something they can't
> 2) to do something they don't want to do
> 3) to settle some internal political discussion
>
> It's not the client's job to know what they need. It's the consultant's
> job to help the client figure out what their needs are. If you can't
> help the client figure this out, then you either shouldn't be doing it,
> or should find someone else who can.