Selecting a CMS - Expert Advice

In my last article, I discussed how we came to a place where we need a new model for website governance that Web professionals could easily use for any size or type of enterprise, for any size or type of website. Today I present my new website governance model and introduce six concepts for the future of website governance.

Your website governance is happening whether or not you know it -- perhaps not always with organizational focus and intent. Here’s a not-so-scary, not-so-dull framework to help you think about (then manage) your website and all its many parts. Hint: it happens on the frontlines where the work is happening, not in the back rooms.

Recent projects have forced me to look critically at how business users interact with their web content management systems, and the significance that the ethereal term “user experience” (which I will use interchangeably with the older term UI or user interface) can have both to their job satisfaction and their productivity. In my opinion, the single most important piece of a web content management solution is the interface used by the editorial team. If the user interface is poor or lacking, your editorial team will not work as quickly, content won’t be as fresh, and traffic to your site will usually drop.

To ensure that your website is working at top efficiency, and has content that engages visitors and converts them into paying customers, you’ll often need to conduct a website review. Learn the first step in this process, the website content audit.

Requirements gathering, the act of trying to understand a problem by talking to a selection of actual and potential users, is common place in nearly all good IT projects. Traditional waterfall projects require that a problem is fully understood, and documented, before beginning to build the solution. Agile projects stipulate that only a “broad brush” understanding of the problem is required to start work, with the gaps in knowledge being filled in as the project progresses. But generally speaking, any type of project, large or small, agile or waterfall, will have some form of requirements gathering component to it.

And that is a problem. You see, all requirements gathering activities are flawed. The end result of any requirements gathering phase is just not very good. Don’t believe me? Let me take you through a typical scenario.

If you followed the advice from the first two articles in this series (How to build a short list and Developing scenarios), you should have a good idea of what you are looking for and with what products you might find some content management system bliss. This next article provides guidance on how you can start evaluating actual products against your defined requirements.

In my last article, I described how to avoid the analysis-paralysis trap and quickly make your way to a short list of content management software options. If you missed that article, check out Selecting a CMS: How to Build a Short List.  If you followed the recommended approach, you should have a good idea of your high-level vision (what type of website you need to manage), your financial and technical constraints and few promising products to look at.

In this article I describe how to define some practical usage scenarios which you will use to shape the product evaluation process.

WCM Field Notes is a regular column written in collaboration with Jon Marks (@McBoof), Head of Development at LBi. This issue lists 15 questions you can use to judge the state of your content management project.

It is easy to see why most companies struggle with the CMS selection process. The market is flooded with hundreds of products and there does not appear to be a "safe", market-leading choice.

Ultimately, you want to select a content management system that supports your requirements and that your users will find usable.  But evaluating CMS software for functionality and usability takes time.  You don't want to waste your time getting intimate with the wrong products, yet battling your way to a reasonable short list is easier said than done. There are some shortcuts, here's how to get started.

WCM Field Notes is a regular column written in collaboration with Jon Marks (@McBoof), Head of Development at LBi. This second issue looks at what Open Source really means, and suggests ways for you to sensibly include both open source and proprietary systems in your Content Management System selection exercise. 

The web content management feature matrix can be a useful tool, if you use it wisely. Here's how.

Analyst firm CMS Watch (news, site) released their latest installment of the Web CMS Report, providing deep insights into 40+ web content management systems, spanning global markets. As usual, there's good, there's bad and there's ugly. What caught our eye is some restructuring of their market analysis. Let's have a look.

We’re live from the City of Smiles, where the J. Boye conference kicked off today in Aarhus, Denmark. The first day is the Tutorial Day with topics ranging from content strategy and governance to persuading people with digital content.

One of the tutorials -- CMS selection: the process, the pitfalls and the best practices -- was presented by analysts Jarrod Gingras of CMS Watch and Peter Sejersen of J. Boye.

The session was prefaced with a statement that there’s no perfect system. Making your CMS requirements too special may make it nearly impossible to find a system that will fit them.