White Paper PostWhite Paper And Business Article Syndication

Common CMS PitfallsHow to implement a Content Management System (CMS) successfully? And how tomanage costs, time-to-market and usersatisfaction at the same time?This article summarizes my experiences and describes the most common pitfalls organizations are likely to encounter when implementing a CMS. Be sure toavoid them and boost up your own organization’s CMS implementation.

IT department selects the CMS productChoosing the wrong CMS product ends up with a loss of money and time (-to-market) and,even worse, expectations not met. Often, the IT department selects the CMS solely on a fewproduct demos and technical preferences, without much understanding of the exact businessrequirements. When this happens, technology ends up driving your business processesrather than vice versa.

Selecting the right CMS is therefore the combined responsibility of the marketing andcommunications department, content authors (business) together with the IT department. Besure to have solid requirements and a business case before selecting a CMS product.

Authors are not part of the designA CMS consists of two parts:- the website and- the editorial environment

Project managers tend to have an outside-in focus. They pay much attention to the websiteand its go-live date but don’t bother much about the design of the editorial processes andworkflows beyond; In fact, they forget what content management is really about.Content is the beating heart of any CMS. However, it is not treated this way once you stickto an outside-in approach only. In this approach authors will not be part of the contentmanagement workflow design and it is far from likely that the solution will meet their requirements.

After project delivery they are unable to change the chosen way of working. Managingcontent in a newly created CMS could therefore be experienced as a major setback comparedto existing way of working. Remember, the better the writer, the more techno phobic theyare. What is “user friendly” to a programmer can be a nightmare to an author.With minimal involvement of authors and other stakeholders, necessary changes in businessprocesses are strongly resisted. In these cases, adoption is often patchy, with some areas taking up the CMS, and others completely ignoringit.

Therefore, the design of a content management solution should always involve the authorsand pay attention to the inside-out processes and workflows. Improving the editorialenvironment is a continuous process, even if your website is live already. A good balancebetween outside-in and inside-out is essential for getting this job done.

Late start of content creationEntering content can sometimes take several months to accomplish. The due date of thewebsite could be at stake! It is important to create the content types in the CMS quicklyand let the authors create content on the development machine. This can also be donewithout templating.Development and content creation runs in parallel processes enabling your organization tospeed up project delivery.What if a CMS is not available yet? Authors could start entering content in a database (use simple database) and import the content into the CMS afterwards.

Moreover, developers receive feedback from authors at an early phase and can implementnecessary changes against less cost. Authors, on the other hand, are ready to work smoothlywith the product as soon as the website is ‘live’ Late content creation is one of the most severe pitfalls in a CMS project.

Inadequate project staffing and skillsContent Management vendors often indicate that building a website can be done by authorsafter taking a CMS templating course. This is definitely not the case. They can, at most,modify existing templates, but building a complete website requires much, much more thansimply creating templates.

Any sound Content Management Solution starts with a solid software architecture anddesign. Eventually it will be integrated in your overall system landscape and it should evolveto a mayor cornerstone for your organization’s Enterprise Content Management architecture. A sound architecture is also a basic requirement for adequate system sizing and performanceoptimization.

The quality of the software architect together with the development team is vital to the success of a Content Management Solution. A skilled architect maps out the right direction,while experienced developers secure productivity and the due date of the project. To guaranteea good CMS implementation, three out of four developers should be qualified CMSprofessionals.

Involving your organization’s technical staff in the development process of a CMS is preferred,even if you are outsourcing the implementation project to an external party. On the otherhand, do not try to engage too many novice integrators into this phase.

HTML is not CMS friendlyHTML describes the lay-out of the website and content types clarify the way content is entered in a Content Management System. Templates will merge these two together into web pages.

The HTML must be ready to operate in a CMS where the upcoming content is unknown; thismeans e.g. table structures in HTML must be constructed from left to right, the HTML mustbe ready to hold different kinds of content and display this content properly, content must beable to be content managed (flash is therefore difficult), etcetera. CMS friendly HTML makestemplating less complicated.

HTML changes during the projectChanging the look and feel (HTML) of the website during the development phase is a biggerproblem. This almost certainly delays a project for a huge amount of time. Therefore it is important to take more time to finish the HTML which is the starting point of the developmentphase. After starting the development phase, do not change the HTML unless it’s complementary to the current HTML or the impact of this change is well known (and signed for).

Changing content types or HTML automatically implies modification of the related templates.

Addition of new functionality Many people are involved in the process of developinga new website. A lot of testing needs to be done before going live. During this periodnew functions could be added to the website, enforcing a new testing round.One should go live when a basic amount of functionality is achieved and is tested successfully; otherwise the due date of the project will be at stake.

Collect the change requests and evaluate them. Categorize the change requests in showstoppers, must-haves, need-to-haves and niceto-haves. Showstoppers should be of course solved in the first release of the website.

Sometimes, the organization tries to enforce the realization of all changed or new functionalityby labeling the change requests as Showstopper. Therefore, examine the showstopperscarefully!

Inadequate author skillsExamine the list of problem reports (errors) carefully. A lot of problems issued are contentrelated problems (sometimes more than 50 percent) and must act as a signal to improvethe author’s knowledge about the way-ofworking of the CMS. He is supposed to entercontent in a different way than expected. Be sure to provide an adequate training for thesystem users and minimize the risk of unnecessary errors.

SummaryImplementing a Content Management System involves more than an installation of a fancyCMS, creating some templates and entering content. Make sure you start with solid businessrequirements and develop a sound system architecture and design.Involve authors at an early stage. The delivery of an efficient editorial environment that providesreal support to your organization and workflows is one of key success factors of asmooth CMS implementation.

CMS implementations need to have a triangular focus on authors, business processes and technology. Having this bird view will create the ability to foresee the problems ahead and react in a proactive way. This will smoothen and significantly boost up your CMS implementation.

The secret of its success in the organization depends mostly on its initial implementation.Yet almost every initial CMS-implementation in a company is destined to have a lot of setbacks and will fail to make the due date of the project.Avoiding the most common pitfalls will maximize the chances to make the due date ontime and have a smooth CMS implementation.