This is the first time I’ve ever blogged, and I must say I’m mightily impressed. WordPress is incredibly simple to set up, it’s flexible and feature-rich. It’s so quick and easy to publish content. It feels liberating, as if technology is working on your side. One wonders why anyone would want to publish content to the web in any other way.
By contrast, an Enterprise Content Management System is clumsy and stuffy. It’s a big, back-office system, remote from the pretty web application to which it publishes content. Editors hate it, it’s the antithesis of blogging. It must sometimes feel to editors as if all the fun and creativity of writing is being drained out of them. Developers, Architects and Project Managers regard CMS with contempt too. When a project needs to integrate with an existing system, it becomes constrained by the features and API that the system offers. The CMS appears to add complexity, and constrains your freedom to design, build and deliver what your customers want.
I think many of my colleagues wish my job didn’t exist. I get in the way of creative people. I make the green field dirty. I piss on the parade. I’m the miserable neighbour who insists on turning the music down at your party. When asked what I do for a living, I would rather pretend to be a Tax Inspector.
I exaggerate, of course. It’s a great job; I love using many different technologies and enjoy the challenge of integrating things, so it’s perfect for someone like me. However to make a serious point, the use of an Enterprise CMS all boils down to the question of cost versus benefit. The cost: the effort of integrating a CMS into your project. The benefit: securing the value of your content.
Creating this “TeamSite Tuesday” blog does not warrant the use of a CMS. I’d be mad to use TeamSite. This is because the content has little or no value. However for an enterprise which has valuable content, ECM is ignored at its peril. I don’t want to break this narrative with a lecture, so my arguments for ECM are listed in another post, The Argument for ECM.
I do understand that CMS systems are sometimes not conducive to the work of an editor, and can appear to work against you. A great deal more work can be done to improve usability. TeamSite forms are sometimes unwieldy. Its workflow can involve too many clicks. Its preview can be shockingly inaccurate. Its behaviour can be bizarre and unpredictable. Its hierarchical branch structure can be confusing.
When working on projects, I will endeavour to make the CMS feel more like a blogging tool. I want to learn lessons from my foray into blogging. TeamSite will never be like WordPress, it’s not intended to be. However there are things which can be done, customisations which can be made, which will improve usability while properly protecting your content.
Involve Content Management from the very beginning of your project, give me time to innovate, and you will be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.
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