This presentation is from a tutorial held at the J. Boye Aarhus 13 conference. See http://aarhus13.jboye.com/tutorial/the-art-and-science-of-selecting-the-right-cms/
The goal is to help you and your team understand Web Content Management technologies, architectures, and the marketplace. Janus Boye led an intensive, fast-paced and vendor-neutral introduction to Web Content Management functionality, product categories and specific vendors. The tutorial concluded with a roadmap for product selection.
The 3-hour tutorial also presents a practical approach to selecting a CMS, based on marketplace realities and the experiences gained in many selection projects. While it is easy to document dozens of functional and technical requirements for a content management system (CMS), writing more requirements actually makes it harder to select a product.
5. Q: What are the biggest
challenges related to CMS?
• Editor interface too heavy
• Vendors too slow at adding new features
• Lack of support and development from
IT
• Poor back-end performance
• Finding good, local system integrators
• To actually leverage the technical
potential of the platform
• …
6. Q: Which things are most
important regarding CMS?
•
•
•
•
•
User friendly: For end-users AND editors
Time-to-market
Performance and stability
Flexibility and open architecture
…
7.
8. ”People don’t want a
drill machine,
they want a hole in
the wall”
- Philip Kotler
16. •
•
•
•
•
Is it just a CMS project for a web site?
Is it only for the intranet?
Mobile-first?
What are the expectations of the project?
Including a blog or newsletter solution as well?
17. It’s not much use to
know what is happening
if you don’t know why
You can’t know why
things are happening if
you don’t know what is
happening
Lou Rosenfeld: ”Marrying Web Analytics and
User Experience” (J. Boye Philadelphia 2009)
15
18. • How to be smart about gathering the
requirements?
19. • What’s the characteristics of good
tender / RFP?
20. ”The nice thing about
standards is that there are so
many of them to choose from”
Andrew S. Tanenbaum
21.
22. • What’s the characteristics of a
winning proposal?
29. About the organisation
Project details, scope and goals
Project timeline
Important use case scenarios (max 10)
CONTENT
Selection criteria
Vendor-related requirements
Related projects
Characteristics and technical architecture
44. 2007 elephants:
- EMC
- IBM
- Interwoven
- Open Text
- Oracle/Stellent
- Vignette
2013 elephants:
- Adobe
- Autonomy (HP)
- EMC
- IBM
- Microsoft
- Open Text
- Oracle
Thorough planning is crucial to the process. This includes:assembling the right project teamIdentifying the needs from the organisationagreeing on how to make decisionsBudgetmaking sure you comply with legal requirements; Talking to other CMS buyersSetting a realistic scope for the projectKnowing the risks etc…In this section we will outline the basic prerequisites of CMS selection, which are crucial to successful projects.
There are several decisions to be made during a CMS selection process. It is extremely important to know how the decisions will be made and who will be making them before the project is launched. If you do not establish how decisions will be made early on, you risk project delays and frustration. The approach outlined in this report is not a model with pluses, minuses and points. Instead the generated output is more descriptive and dialogue based. If your decision makers expect a large points based schedule on which a decision can be made, make sure to address that early on. Before thinking about the decision making process, verify as to whether there are things you cannot decide. Are you part of a large company, or government organisation, where rules on procurement of software are firmly in place? Licences for a CMS which you are now supposed to implement may already be a reality. There may be a fixed set of legal requirements which should be used in all projects.
Have a budget for the projectMake sure to plan for after launch as well. Often year 2 is just as expensive or even more expensiveMake sure to include maintenance, licenses, hosting etc. – this can be quite a lot
Sometimes vendors will try to make you sign a contract quickly. There is always room for negotiations when you are ready. Avoid falling for the classic special-price-for-you-trick.
Thorough planning is crucial to the process. This includes:assembling the right project teamIdentifying the needs from the organisationagreeing on how to make decisionsBudgetmaking sure you comply with legal requirements; Talking to other CMS buyersSetting a realistic scope for the projectKnowing the risks etc…In this section we will outline the basic prerequisites of CMS selection, which are crucial to successful projects.