Victor Lombardi gives some practical and useful advice drawn from real-world successful CMS implementations.
1. Keep the team small.
2. Dont try to fix everything at once. A CMS alone is complex enough; combining that effort with a site redesign, new workflow, new content, and more may be asking for trouble.
3. Only build what you need. If more effort is needed to implement a CMS than to manage the content manually, the return on investment is quickly lost.
4. Create an efficient information architecture. A content management system with a different template for every published page would not be very efficient.
5. Show your content some love. Of all tasks in a content management project, the creation, editing, and migration of content are probably the most frequently underestimated on the project plan.
6. Hire bouncers as project managers. You do need rigorous project managers that understand CM issues who will babysit the team to make sure every little task is getting done.
7. Tightly integrate design and technology. CMS involves certain components, such as content entry screens, that require a combination of interaction design, information architecture, writing, and database programming skills. Few people do all these things well, and having different people or groups design these components in isolation risks poor quality and consistency.
8. Buy the right size. The number one problem with software is the expense.
9. Design faster than business can change. Designing fast may mean keeping the scope small, but it can also mean finding innovative approaches to problems rather than simply following conventional methods.
10. Get a second opinion. Content management is an elaborate, dynamic field and there are several solutions to any problem.
Timely tips to keep in mind as we go about re-organizing and designing Netcore’s website using a CMS.
