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

[Peter VanDijck]

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.
> So the vendors sell to the business' poorly understood requirements, and the
> whole endeavor fails.
> You could blame the vendor for the failing ("You should have known we didn't
> know what we were talking about!"), but that's foolish.

And Todd says:
> Non-sense.
> It is part of the Vendor (consultant)'s job to understand the client's 
> needs and requirements. 

In short (and correct me if I'm wrong): Peter is talking about vendors
of enterprise products. Todd is talking about companies that do
consulting. 

Vendors cannot be trusted to do consulting, and companies (here I
disagree with Peter) should not be expected to be able to gather their
own requirements in an area so specific and probably unrelated to their
core competency as CMS. Solution: get consultants to define your
requirements. New problem: the whole consultant industry and all its
problems.

On a related note, <alert type='rant'> I am flabbergasted (if PeterM can
say 'Hogwash' I can say 'flabbergasted') with the general
ineffectiveness of large companies' purchasing processes. I see very
little understanding of the effects of technology lock-in, and little
understanding of how evolving requirements/businesses affect technology
purchases. Little understanding of what standards really mean for a
company. And don't get me started on the lack of user research. The
whole mindset of the people making the purchasing decisions often seems
to be "technology will fix it". Time and time again. </alert>

PeterV