How do I choose the right solution?
 
We’ve all heard the cliché of the project built by committee – somewhere there’s a camel and the original design for a horse. But also don’t forget the “Wisdom of Crowds” (great book by James Surowiecki). The first thing the Project Manager should assemble is a community of contributors that will be utilizing your new CMS. Create a series of forums about what’s broken with the current process, and how the new process should work.

Once these forums have been established, consider developing an “official” document which will explain the project and its desired outcome in detail. This Project Definition will be your requirements document as you gather all of the desired outcomes and new capabilities, and start to map them against a set of features, functions and services that you’ll require from your chosen solution. Many larger organizations choose to outsource the Project Definition phase to consultants with either vertical expertise and/or previous CMS implementation experience.  In general, the goal of this Project Definition is to outline:

  • The Scope of the Project: What this project will entail (which divisions, which Web sites).
  • The Business Goals of the Project: What we will achieve from a business point of view and how we will measure the success of the project.
  • The Key Deliverables: Is there a new Web site and a new CMS, or just a CMS, other
    • functional items?
  • Key Assumptions Being Made: What key assumptions need to be made and dependencies outlined in order to satisfy the above deliverables.
  • Key People Involved: The key people and their role on the project.
  • Functional Business Requirements of the Project: These are the key benefits not specific features. (e.g. “easier to manage content and publish to the Web” NOT “XHTML compliant output”).

  • Functional Technical Requirements of the Project: Keep these high level for now – but
    • capture any critical items (e.g. must be Microsoft based, or must be able to scale separate of Web traffic

Then, as you are selecting a tool to deploy, it’s helpful to remember that number one goal again. If you don’t provide your users with a usable tool then all of the other features are useless. That said, usability is much more than just an easy way to cut and paste from MSWord into a WYSIWYG editor. Savvy Project Managers will pay attention to the flexibility of the system – realizing that it contributes to overall usability:
Because CMS projects have many touchpoints with different parts of the organization, making sure that you have invested stakeholders across all of them is extraordinarily important.

Establishing an effective training, “application ownership” and support strategy can be the most important part of an effective project.

Then, once you understand the needs of your community, and the business goals - you can then begin your search for the perfect tool to meet those goals.

You may want to have a look at our listing of white papers for more detailed information on putting together your RFP - or the complete article on how to manage life after launch of your new CMS.