Keen CMS Observations

I especially like the below comment. In all of the years that I’ve been working with CMS software, getting the business owners to refine their expectations is always the hardest part. It’s common that they know that a CMS can “do it all” and therefore they want a build that uses every aspect of the large, expensive swiss army knife.

A common risk with implementing an enterprise-wide WCM system is in overanalyzing the requirements, which can lead to complex functional requirements. Since each business function manages content differently, workflows are created with complex processes to cover all scenarios. Complex scenarios for content creation, content approval and content publishing include exception conditions that require extensive customization of the tool prior to implementation. A large corporation that fell into this trap had automated escalation built into the tool if certain content was not approved within a predefined number of days. Within a few days of the system implementation, many C-level executives were being bombarded with email about how content was not approved and needed escalation. Needless to say, the workflow rules were changed shortly thereafter. This risk can be avoided by keeping the requirements simple and focusing on the least common denominator rule set.