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Managing Enterprise Content
The authors, Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, and Steve Manning, make the case for their "Unified Content Strategy" -- a practical and logical way of researching, planning, preparing, testing, implementing and selling content management across an enterprise. The lessons contained in this easy-to-read volume are not lost on smaller organizations, however; departments, small work groups, even individuals, will also benefit from learning innovative ways to effectively create, use and manage content.
The author's main message is that a well-planned "unified content strategy" can provide a dramatic improvement in the way content is created in an organization. A "Unified Content Strategy" is defined as "a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source, and assembling content on demand to meet your customers' needs." According to the authors, improvements that result from implementing such a strategy include "increased quality and consistency and long-term reduced time and costs for development and maintenance. In addition, reuse provides support for rapid re-configuration of your content to meet changing needs."
Of particular importance, the authors provide guidance on selecting a strategy before you get started; they explain their Unified Content Strategy, the importance of single sourcing (write it once, use it often), and how a properly planned content management initiative can help your organization deliver the right content to the right people at the right time in the format they desire. The authors also cover topics including: information modeling (the key to content reuse), content analysis, usability, IT and Business partnerships, metadata strategies, the importance of XML, tool selection, change management, training and more.
Section one of the book includes three chapters that address content creation, content reuse, and the return on investment a Unified Content Strategy can provide content-laden organizations. The authors set the stage for the introduction of their methods in Chapter One, "The Basis of a Unified Content Strategy," by illustrating the demons involved in what they call, "The Content Silo Trap" -- a common situation in which content is created by authors working in isolation from one anther, oftentimes re-creating the same types of content over and over again for different purposes (e.g. print, web, online help, marketing collateral, call center/help desk, computer-based training, etc.) The authors say content silos negatively impact the bottom line of any organization because they don't promote collaboration, leverage existing content creation activities, nor do they support the overall goals of the enterprise. Far too often, according to the book, silos create inconsistency, inaccuracy, and costly, unnecessary content re-creation expense. By adopting a Unified Content Strategy, organizations can enjoy faster time to market, reduced costs, improved quality and usability of content, improved workplace and customer satisfaction, as well as unique opportunities to innovate. Each of these topics is explored in the chapter with examples sprinkled throughout the book.
Chapter 2 describes, in detail, the "Fundamental Concepts of Reuse." It's an excellent chapter for those attempting to better understand the content their organizations create and how content re-use can help streamline the content creation process. The authors explore why you should re-use content, who's been doing it and why, as well as the two types of content reuse -- opportunistic and systematic -- and the benefits and drawbacks of each. Examples are provided for these methods in addition to a description of circumstances where reuse may not be appropriate. The entire chapter is available for download.
Chapter three, "Assessing a Return on Investment," helps readers determine the anticipated savings realized by adopting a Unified Content Strategy. A discussion of how to quantify and qualify the goals of such an effort are discussed, and information is provided to help you start assessing your actual costs (training, technology, consulting, lost productivity, etc). If you've got to sell your project to upper management and demonstrate potential ROI, this chapter is an excellent starting point. Don't overlook the section on developing metrics -- it's extremely useful.
Section two, "Performing a Substantive Audit: Determining Business Requirements," is a four-chapter compendium of information designed to help you establish where the content pains are in your organization and how you can address them. Chapter four and five help readers identify and understand their "content lifecycle" (to determine where improvements can be made to your existing processes) and chapter six, "Performing a Content Audit," seeks to help readers gain an "intimate understanding" of the nature and structure of the content to be managed. The authors describe how to perform a content audit, and provide several excellent examples of the process using scenarios that many readers will understand (medical devices, consumer electronics, banking institutions, learning materials). Instructions for building a reuse map -- a tool that identifies which content elements are reusable, where reuse would be beneficial, and whether the content would be reused "as is" (identical reuse) or with modification (derivative reuse) -- are provided. This section will not be lost on IT pros who have been using object-oriented programming reuse strategies for years. However, managing content is not the same as managing code. Content appropriate for public consumption has some unique considerations that the authors discuss in detail. Practical examples will help you think through content issues you may not have considered before.
Chapter 7, "Envisioning the Content Lifecycle," examines requirements gathering by using two fictitious companies as examples. A series of tables and explanatory text is provided to help readers better understand how to tie requirements to a return on investment. Readers are encouraged to use the exercise as the basis for designing improvements to your business processes and tool selection. In many organizations, IT departments are ill-equipped to develop solutions that address content lifecycle issues because IT staffers don't fully understand issues affecting content creation, management, publishing, archiving and translation. The authors attempt to shine light on this issue by exploring the importance of involving a team of subject matters experts, users, clients, etc. to help ensure the requirements gathered will help create new and improved business processes. The lesson: There's no sense automating a bad business process.
Section three tackles the issue of design by introducing the concepts of information modeling, metadata, dynamic content, workflow and implementation. Each chapter is jam-packed with real-world information and examples that simplify the concepts presented. Of particular interest is Chapter 8, "Information Modeling," which helps readers understand the significance an information model plays in the formalizing of content structure, and the subsequent creation of DTDs and schemas. As well, Chapter 9, "Designing Metadata," does an excellent job of exploring the role metadata play in labeling, categorizing and describing content, thereby enabling organizations to provide dynamic content to users on demand. This chapter is also available online. Visit "A Metadata Primer" at CMSWatch.
The remainder of the book discusses objectively the tools and technologies you can use to support a Unified Content Strategy. Such familiar topics as Extensible Markup Language, selecting tools, and evaluating vendors are discussed, as well as various authoring, workflow, and delivery systems -- necessary parts of any content management initiative. The book gives equal coverage to collaborative authoring, change management, implementation challenges and transition planning, although the authors admit they aren't able to cover each topic in as much detail as some readers might desire. Readers will need to seek out additional resources for such information. A useful glossary of terms, an extensive bibliography, and several appendices are also provided. Appendix A is a "Checklist for Implementing a Unified Content Strategy"; Appendix B explores the issues affiliated with "Writing for Multiple Media"; Appendix C examines vendors and their products; Appendix D includes a "Tools Checklist"; and Appendix E explores "Content Relationships."
The book could be improved by lengthening some examples, and by providing a few more case studies (although they are admittedly hard to obtain in such a new arena). As well, the book publisher should have abandoned their table structure for one that would better accommodate the information provided. However, providing access to a companion web site is a great idea that will allow the authors to provide additional information to readers when issues arise that are not discussed fully in the book.
Regardless of your particular situation, if you've got an interest in content management, I highly recommend Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy as well as the book's companion web site. The site provides a solid overview of the strategy, a free chapter from the book, a Return on Investment (ROI) calculator, glossary, white papers and more. The content on this site is extremely useful and is indicative of the quality content found in the book.
Scott Abel is a content management strategist who assists his clients in planning and preparing for content management initiatives. Scott is a frequent presenter at industry and professional service seminars, an instructor at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis Community Learning Network, and vice president of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), Hoosier Chapter. You can purchase Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I wish I had an important enough job to require my reading of this book.
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Fundamentally, managing a web site is going into the publishing business. Not something you should do unless you actually have something to say, and people interested in hearing it.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
One of the best ways to increase the odds of success on a project is to use prototyping. For me, the biggest argument for prototyping is that you really don't know what you need to build until the users can look at something that allows them to visualize how they are going to use it and tell you, "That's exactly what I need" or more likely "No, it won't work that way, it needs to do this." There is a belief within many organizations that through focus groups and the development of use cases and detailed requirements specifications, you can determine exactly what you need to build, built it, and roll out the perfect system. I've not seen it happen and, frankly, I don't think it's possible. I've seen this type of implementation labeled as a success. However, that's usually not the opinion of the people who have to live with and use the application every day. They have to change how they do their work because when they finally "saw" how the new system worked they had signed off on the design. Through their acceptance they now have to live with what was built. I'm not against focus groups, use cases, or detailed specs. They are key components of building systems right, but if we don't add the piece that provides true validation of those components, we devalue their use. People think in images. If we don't help them see the future with a prototype, they may not see it. Actually doing the work with a prototype enables people who will be doing the work to actually see their future. It is in this process where the greatest discoveries are often made. This can draw out ideas that will make your process sing - isn't that what you were looking to do in the first place? Here are some important reasons why I see prototyping as a necessary component for project success.
1. Creativity. Prototyping encourages creative development by both the developers and the users. Like brainstorming, once team members begin traveling down a path, the possibilities of what they can come up with are practically limitless. Creativity is an area of a person's work that can make that person's job much more satisfying. 2. True evaluation by system users. Watching the application in action is the only way that most people can truly evaluate it. Due to the limit of items the human mind can hold in their conscious mind, people cannot see all the components of the complex systems we are documenting. People only see the potential problems when they see the entire process and they are only going to exert a limited amount of effort in reading about a system being considered. 3. Find problems and possibilities early on. As we've learn through the years, the most costly problems are those that go undetected the longest. The earliest we find something, the less our cost. That's a core component of TQM-Total Quality Management: find the costliest errors early. A prototype allows you to develop an application with only the resources (cost) that make it verifiable so that it can be reviewed by those with the right domain knowledge to either correct errors that are identified or uncover additional opportunities that were previously not considered. Successfully blend solid strategic thinking and tactics- spend the correct amount of effort up front to ensure you are building the right solution before you spend the big dollars to build it right.
Yes, folks do raise some valid concerns about prototyping so let me take a crack at responding to the three that I have heard the most often.
1. "Is it done yet?" (Raised expectations). When users see something that looks real, there is a belief that it must be just about ready to use. The best way to handle this is to make sure that everyone is aware of the process so that when you remind them that there is still plenty to do, they are not totally shocked and are somewhat accepting of that idea. If they are told up front how things will progress and the benefits of doing things this way, they tend to be all for it. Keep them aware of all progress -- even the parts that they can't see -- with regular sta
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Most books/discussions involving content management these days are too focused on the technical details of particular CMS solutions, and of course everybody has their own opinion. The fact is, most CMS products (open source or not) only have value if it's done along with educating users and evaluating the specific ways people are using content. Most people think of dynamic websites when they think of content management, but there are MANY organizations that use/need solutions that can't just be solved with your runofthemill PHP/MySql/Apache. it's just not as simple as that. How about daily newspapers ? Weekly magazines ? Technical journals ? Catalog producers, Creative departments in ad agencies, stock photography libraries....the list can go on and on. One of the largest mistake of implementing a CMS is a perspective problem. You can't allow the flow of content in an organization to be dictated by the software only. There needs to be an understanding of how content flows in order for a CMS to work correctly. Otherwise, you might as well not even have a CMS.
I am currently the operations manager for an enterprise content management system for a large financial institution. My IT department is currently participating in an assessment, initiated by our business partners, of throwing out our version controlled dynamic webservices portal IN FAVOUR OF HTML. This boggles my mind, and seems completely idiotic, but they're in charge of the $, and they insist that they're not getting 'value' for their content presentation. The problem, as i see it, is that HTML creation is a relatively simple skillset which is easy to predict and easy for the business to understand...you want x # of pages, that takes y amount of time. Arguments like "what about version control?", expotential increase of manual maintenance effort over time, etc are hard to quantify, and my concerns are rejected as "just theory" or "technology trying to make themselves sound important, its not that complicated."
Granted, this situation is partly the result of internal politics at my corporation, but i think that if the ground work for ROI was done more thoroughly up front during the delivery of this CMS this would not be much of an issue. I for one will buy this book if only to get some insight into industry standard ways of how to caluclate ROI for things like content reuse, publication between channels of delivery, content maintenance costs, etc.
If anyone has any suggestions on how to manage this situation, or how you've dealt with similar concerns, i'd be open to your thoughts.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I agree that most content management software out there is complete crap. But the rest of your advice is really off-base for the sort of people who look to those content management systems. Many organizations who use or need content management have content that non-technical people need to be able to maintain that needs to appear across different media (web, direct mail, multiple web sites, etc). They need to have simple and direct control over where and how the information will appear by checking a few boxes and clicking a few buttons. Simple tools won't support that sort of thing for a large corporation. I don't know of any complex tools that do the job well, but there are some that do some parts of it well.
your advice works when you're talking about managing a website, but Content Management needs to be able to work anywhere.
cvs, makefiles, and perl can't do it for a daily newspaper, weekly syndicated catalog company, or ad agency who needs to have stock photography categorized and in-sync with newsletters.
a lot of people assume that "content management" is nothing but a way to keep a website up to date, which is like saying engines are only used for mowing lawns.
From my limited experience, I've found that trusting users with HTML is just a total pain. Granted I was working with people who had no HTML experience but were entering content via a WYSIWYG type interface.
You will get everything from wrong fonts, colours, line breaks and your entire site/intranet will look a mess.
And when it starts to hit you is when your boss says that it doesn't work on a big clients browser (they still use Netscape 4) and that sales want to access the intranet on their PDA's. Using HTML here will just not work.
XML is no 'silver bullet' and I certainly agree that educating 'non web savvy' users to use XML is just doesn't work in real life. They break it, can't figure out why they break it and what happens is the site doesn't get updated but if you write your tools carefully and choose the appropriate software, XML will allow you to use XSL amongst other technologies to get your site working great on IE, Opera, Konqueror, PDA's - whatever.
Once a site gets to a certain stage, simple tools aren't that powerful and you will usually find that managers don't like simple looking UI's - they want Javascripts, Flash, you name it. If your site is being used to promote your company it -needs- to look good.
no, but I think the aim of this book is to provide a methodology of practice and understanding your users from a content perspective, which is often overlooked. unfortunately, a lot of organizations often just lean on the technical merits of a particular CMS software solution with no regard to the users who will use it to control content flow.
In our company, we have a terrible problem with content management - most of it caused by a reliance on you-know-who's office suite for documents. I have proosed several times that we migrate to XML (preferably docbook) but the reality is there are no tools for the no-technical types to create documents.
What we need a warm-fuzzy WYSIaWYG editor that can looks like a word processor but uses XML as it's native format so that documents can be diffed and transformed easily. There are lots of word processors, and lots of XML editors, but no word processors for XML. (and please, before you mention OpenOffice.org, bear in mind that it's DOC format it zipped XML, and therefore not diffable.)
The tools are close - you can almost use OpenOffice.org for docbook, or someone could develop the tools to diff and transfrom their current format, but until then we are stuck with proprietary formats (making books like the above necessary, i guess).
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Zope (http:/www.zope.org) is object oriented webserver written in Python. It has a lot of content management features right out of the box and for those who want more, there are quite a lot of plug ins (products) that extend this functionality. It is open source, available for all major operating systems and completely configurable from the browser. Recommended for most content management jobs.
Then you've obviously never worked with it... they have some incredible salesmen, some bright-eyed but mostly clueless professional services consultants and an over-engineered under-performing product.
Vignette never delivered on its personalisation promises, and once you've removed that the only thing left going for them is caching.
It is the caching and cache flushing that enables those big sites to run so well... nothing to do with managing the content at all.
Purchase some cheap boxes and throw squid onto it or configure your own reverse proxy and you will have solved the cache issue.
I've been unfortunate enough to use Vignette for several years... and the single thing I've seen nearly every organisation that has it do... is replace it. But most kept the Vignette CURL (their 'custom URL') as it did faciliate easier cache management.
The place that I currently work at uses Tomcat instead of Vignette... but if you were to look at our URLs you wouldn't have been able to tell.
All that said... they had some incredible salesmen and good relationships with Accenture... and that has seen them a very long way.
Bottom line, Vignette was never real content management, it's just an application that connects to a database and makes text files which it can then delete if something gets updated in the database.
I think the first thing you'd have to do is arrange the episodes by ship. I'd probably start with NCC-1701 (no bloody A, B, C, or D) and work my way forward. Then you'd either go by episode, or maybe by how much of a factor ths ship played in the show. Like, it was really important in space battles and what not, or when it had to seperate, but sometimes it was more about the crew. Then I'd take the ones that stunk, like the ones that focued on that little bastard CleverNickN... err, Wesley Crusher and toss them, cause they mostly sucked.
I suppose you could probably catalouge the series based on when the ship blew up, because that happened quite a bit.
(btw, if you're reading this Clever, I don't really think your episodes sucked, except for maybe the last one you were in... I had always kinda hoped you'd come back, but NOOO, you had to go and do some stupid shuttle manuever and kill your bud, and then blame it on his dead body, blowing a WHOLE YEAR at the Academy! And why didnt they ever let you shack up with that hot engineer chick?! Huh?! Huh?!?))
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I think most people who are responding do not get the scope of the problem in the interprise.
I work for a rather large (unnamed company) which has one of the largest data centers in California (nope not that company, you would be suprised who we are).
In any event our intranet consists of over 150,000 flat HTML pages. We have over 2000 web servers running anything from NT4 to Unix to our Mainfraims hosting web services to get data out of them.
Now look at the problem of having a couple dozen physical locations where employees work. We also have 2 physical mirrors of all our data in 2 different locations.
Now here is the problem. The guy who works in the company cafateria wants to update his webpage which has the menu for what they are selling at the cafateria in building X.
He has no idea on how to use any technical tools, but the man cooks like there is no tomorrow. So don't ask him to wack away at HTML. Do not ask him to use CVS. Do not ask him to start a script. He wants something like a word processor to go in and edit his webpage.
Now this presents another whole new problem. How do the systems administrators know Mr. Chef is allowed in. How do we do rights management accross all our servers. We have everything from Mainframes to desktops, to NT to Windows 2003 to several flavors of *nix.
Now how does the system get back ahold of Mr. Chef when he doesn't update his webpage? There is no use in having information about a cafateria menu which is 2 weeks old? How does the system know that the data is stale, and how do we get Mr. Chef to come back and update his website. There needs to be some type of self governing mechinism.
So I don't think CVS or whatever will solve this problem. Interprise CMS problems are of the non-trivial type. Our company has spent the last year or so studying the problem, and will problably spend another year or so before we actually choose the direction we are going. And to be honest we are probably looking at a $50+ million investment to roll out our CMS system. How's that for non-trivial?
Ted Tschopp
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Buyer: All the old logos will need to be identified and changed.
Guy from our company (on a competing team): We'll have to examine every page on every site to make sure we get them all. I estimate 3 weeks.
Guy from my team: Or we could go to the Compliance cabinet where those things are kept, find the Logo.gif file, and change it there. I estimate 3 minutes.
Guy #1: What if not all of the logos came from that cabinet?
Guy #2: So your people haven't been following the branding guidelines? The ones that are in place for exactly situations like this?
Guy #1: No, we've been following them.
Guy #2: Ok then. Next.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
But no one wants to die.
(sigh). Yet another book that shows us the Promised Land, but without a guide to get there. If I had a buck for every time I have cursed the lameware cobbled together to manage content on development projects...
Managers are all in favor of content management, but in my experience they don't have any idea of what that means. They would prefer to pay far more for a system developed in house instead of buying COTS components or systems developed for the very purpose.
Not that it's all their fault: IT vendors oversold their products' capabilities and ease of use & customization, so many organizations are rightly skeptical.
Still, books like this perhaps should have a chapter discussing how to motivate the managers to understand the importance of an effective system, and how to close the credibility gap.
I'm in the middle of a content management nightmare. Seems to me the biggest problem with CMS is that once you've simplified something to the level where a target user in your company can use it, another target user is utterly confused. So you try to simplify, simplify more, until you want to strangle them.
e " one more time, I'm going to freak out. And in response to that, if I hear "where do I enter that again?" one more time, I'll kill myself.
CMS is hard when users have been using FrontPage for 5 years and still can't make pages look the way they want. CMS is hard when users create a 375 page document, complete with images and tables, and ask "how can I publish this to our clients via the website? By the way, it's a Word Doc." CMS is hard when, after 5 years, your users don't understand that "save the file to servername sharename" means "file > save as > \\servername\sharename\filename.ext".
How can you create a CMS when all people know how to do is save files into "My Documents", and still manage to lose them?
If I have to say, "that means backslash-backslash-servername-backslash-sharenam
This is the heart of CMS, as I see it. CMS is stringing networking, websites/intranets/extranets, and the ol' File Manager (Explorer) together in a way that is understandable by people who refuse to learn or try to comprehend anything new.
As I've begun using Linux, I've started to see how using symbolic links could simplify things more. I could smbmount, ln -s, and say "if you want to publish that *here*, save it to siteB/filename". The only clarification I'd have to make is "no, you don't have to type anything else, just siteB/filename". Unfortuantely, we're using Windows on the clients and Web Folders and Mapped Drives just don't do the trick.
My advice to anyone who embarks on a CMS project: Don't. In fact, better advice: Kill yourself.
I work for a law firm, and we originally had a fantastic content management system: an attorney would have a case and an issue would arise that had been addressed before, and he would go grab the old file (perhaps from a different client) and reuse the forms or follow the procedures from a prior case.
Since that point, we've evolved it to more of an "electronic" filing cabinet. A networked box holds sanitized example documents by category of law (divorce, custody, personal injury, business formation, wills and probate, etc.). It is more useful than things were before, but it is not ideal. If you do something that is unusual or especially good, you are encouraged to submit it to the file.
In addition, "how to" documents are created for new or unusual practice areas as guidelines or checklists for various procedures (how to handle a basic will, checklists for complaints, client interview checklists for various types of cases, etc.). None of this eliminates the use of sound judgment or experience, but the documents serve as tools to assist the attorneys -- it is sometimes hard to stay on track or get everything in a client interview that can last for over an hour. The checklists help with that.
Not everybody contributes to the file repository and there is nobody in charge of vetting the documents to ensure that they are "best of breed" type documents. It does prevent the "reinventing the wheel" problem to some extent, however.
When I worked for Ernst & Young, they were really pushing to make information retention and reuse a priority. Contributions to the document repository were considered in performance evaluations. The resources were aggressively managed (vetted, categorized, reviewed documents to prevent "staleness") by knowledgable individuals for each practice area and there were a number of groups which were extremely focused on reselling knowledge.
IT people who can provide this sort of service are going to do well. Service businesses cannot improve margins without making use of technology to improve efficiencies, and content management is a fantastic way to help them get there. Very very few small to medium sized businesses really make use of content management to increase their margins, and this is one area where, even in a bad economy, IT can really help to make a positive contribution to the bottom line.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits