Some Specifics

After the last few posts, perhaps it's time to offer some specifics about implementation choices.  In recent conversations with some of our customers, there were a few choices that seemed to come up over and over.  These were all areas where business units REQUESTED features and then regretted it.

• Too much workflow
• Too much notification
• Too many fields

Workflow is something everyone gets excited about when adopting a content management system.  Because you can automate so much, so easily, everyone gets into the workflow wish list.  Since it is almost the same amount of time to build a twenty-seven step workflow as it is to build a seven step workflow, implementers rarely question it and just build it.  Then the process takes hold.  Suddenly everyone who asked for all that process finds themselves overwhelmed by it. The solution here is relatively simple.  Just remove and consolidate the extra states in the process.

Notification generated by workflow was also a common complaint.  It seems like a great idea to get notified whenever someone edits a press release.  But then, users start getting the emails and realize, they'd rather just check a view in the system to see updates.  Again, it's relatively simple to just turn off notifications to address this.

One of the hardest things to determine is optimal balance of structured versus unstructured information in any given content type.  Indeed, it is a topic that often requires days of modeling and design.  But one comment we hear a lot is from customers is that they probably should have cut back on the fields.  While easy enough to remove, those un-used fields represented a lot of extra time as they were anticipated for use in template development, queries, and other areas of the system that were also not necessary once the fields were removed.  The best advice here was, be stingy.  Include only fields you KNOW you will use first, and then add more later as they are required.

As for contentions , I'm off to San Francisco for the Content Management Strategies conference to speak on a few more problems related to process.  If you're headed to the show on Tuesday, April 4, 3-4pm, drop by and listen.