Hobbs David Hobbs

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Streamlining large multisite CMS rollouts

11-Jul-2011

Tags: Web Content and Experience Management, Implementation

If you're rolling hundreds or thousands of sub- or micro-sites across your enterprise in the context of a new Web CMS, you'll want to streamline the coordination between subsite owners and the central implementation team.

Here are some steps you can take to reduce coordination time:

  • Make the process understandable. Clearly communicating the process, delivering to that process, and communicating about the new system will work can reduce coordination time.  For reference, see this list of steps.
  • Use simple forms where possible. By asking subsite owners to fill in the blanks of a simple form, the core team is both communicating expectations and also allowing the business unit site managers to provide feedback clearly and quickly. For example, when requesting a standard subsite, the subsite owner could provide: a) acknowledgement that they're read all standards documentation, b) agreement on particular points (such as that the subsite will need to follow some templated format), and c) answers to some simple questions such as site name, root folder, names of people who should get access, and so forth.
  • Design to deliver in meaningful chunks. Instead of trickling information to site owners, deliver in meaningful and complete batches. For instance, when forwarding an inventory of current site assets the core team should highlight those areas of the subsite that represent issues that need to be resolved before migration can be initiated (such as embeded codes, forms, and such), rather than this turning into a long back-and-forth discussion.

The goal here is to avoid:

  • Long discussions at any point
  • Multiple handoff points
  • Confusion

By not considering each new site as a completely novel implementation requiring in-depth discussions, you limit suprises.  Do this right, and you can deliver high-quality subsites relatively quickly with much less hassle for everyone.

    Excerpt from the Vignette - OpenText Evaluation

    Web Content Management Report looks at... Documentation in Open Text Web Experience Management

    "Documentation exists, but licensees complain it is quite cursory at times, leaving some features undocumented. A web search will turn up a lot of miscellaneous documentation, much of which is just old enough to be unreliable. Like many companies in this space, OpenText keeps its documentation hidden from public view, giving the impression of a closed, proprietary approach to technology in a time of increasing openness...."
    (p. 225)

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