Step 2 Towards a WCMS – The Objective and Requirements

This is the second in a series of posts that documents the path I took towards developing a Statement of Work, Project Requirements and ultimate selection of a Web Content Management System for my Organization, the Department of Defense Education Activity, DoDEA. In this post I will briefly talk about the path I took in order to develop a comprehensive list of WCMS requirements.

Having completed the first step in the process and having identified the group of individuals that would be involved in selecting the WCMS I set out to draft a clear objective and a list of requirements that would help us evaluate and ultimately select a WCMS.

I had a pretty good idea of the broad requirements that would be needed for our WCMS, however, my experience had been mostly centered on small sites with limited admin access and traffic. In only one previous scenario had I worked on a system that was installed as part of a farm of clustered servers and fit more of the “enterprise” model. So, my first step here was to do some additional research to educate myself the main features of most commercially available Content Management Systems.

I ventured out on the web and visited Wikipedia to get a broad definition of what a Web Content Management System is. Having done that I turned to the professional community (linkedIn) to gain a better understanding from what they saw as the critical, or top level requirments for and enterprise WCMS.

The responses were varied and all offered valuable information. Furthermore I attended several “meet-ups” geared towards content management professionals that helped me draft our primary objective/argument for obtaining a WCMS:

The primary objective of this Statement of Requirements (SoR) is to set out what the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) wants to achieve through the effective management of content.

What is the Web Content Management System (WCMS) supposed to achieve and how will it make the DoDEA web presence more unified, useful and effective. Furthermore, how will the deployment of a WCMS facilitate and empower Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in the Area, District and School offices to manage their web sites more effectively, share content, collaborate with each other, and disseminate information quickly and efficiently to their customers (parents, students and staff) in one global environment?

My goal was to write a limited number of top level items that I could drill down from. I wanted to draft these without the “influence” of any product literature. I wanted the requirements to drive the selection process and not the products to drive the requirements. The initial list included nearly 40 items broken up into several “top” categories:

Back-end/admin
Content Authoring
Content Management
Content Display
Content Publishing/Site Display
Support/Help
Records & Reporting
Collaboration/Personalization

I shared this initial list (and the associated requirements) internally with my peers (the individuals identified in Step 1) in order to focus the categories and requirements items a bit more. Receiving input on a regular basis was extremely valuable and has kept my counterparts “involved” and as part of the process. Throughout I have continued to tweak the language and identified which items in the list were must haves. Through this process I came across two extremely valuable resources:

CMSWatch.com – While I did not purchase any of their reports, I did invest in one of their online training sessions: Fundamentals of Web Content Management Technology. The training covered many of the things I had found on my own through research and reading and it added lots of additional information that assisted me in refining the requirements.
Step Two Designs – From whom I purchased the Content Management Requirements Toolkit (CMRT). This document proved to be an extremely valuable resource, and gave me the final push towards completing the initial draft of the SoR.

By the time I found the CMRT my requirements list was pretty extensive. What the CMRT did for me was help me break down my categories into a smaller clearer subset. I was amazed at how close my initial breakdown came to those recommended by the CMRT and how many of my requirements were discussed and furthered detailed in the document. I highly recommend it…

Armed now with my objective and requirements I set out to finish the Statement of Work by adding additional matter that would inform and educate my leadership and potential vendors as to what exactly we wanted at DoDEA. Below is the final outline of the SoR document as presented to the Agency’s leadership for review:

Business Case – Objective, why we need a WCMS, and the benefits that will be gained by getting one.
Executive Summary – What the WCMS will help us achieve
- SoR Goals and Objectives
- About DoDEA
- Current Characteristics
- Proposed Structure
- Project Scope
- Project Goals
Technical Architecture – Where the WCMS will be installed
Technical Requirements – What the WCMS must provide

There you have it – in a nutshell. The overall process took me nearly 3 months to complete. The most valuable lesson? Research and input. Read as much as you can and solicit as much input as possible from those that will be involved in the process and from other professionals in the field.

If you have any questions or want more detailed information feel free to contact me directly. As always, comments are welcome.

Below is a list URLS mentioned in my post and links to resources and books I refered to on a regular basis during this process:

Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites

Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (VOICES)

Enterprise Content Management Solutions: What You Need to Know

Enterprise Content Management Methods: What You Need to Know

Content Management Bible

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm and is filed under CMS, Recent Design Work and tagged with CMS, LinkedIn, Objectives, Requirements, WCMS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.