Byrne Tony Byrne

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Why do IAs hate their Web CMS tools?

26-Mar-2007

Tags: Web Content Management, Implementation, Information Architecture

This past weekend, Theresa Regli and I presented at the 2007 IA Summit. In a room full of about 80 information architects I asked how many worked with a Web CMS tool. Approximately 60 hands went up. And of those I asked, who was pleased with their current CMS. Every hand went down. Without exception. And what about enterprise portals? About 30 hands went up and 5 stayed up (hurrah!) when I asked if they were pleased. An informal survey 4 years ago showed similar frustrations. What's going on here?

At one level, I think vendors have had a tendency to remain distant from the IA and user experience communities, and their tools have suffered as a result. But I also think IAs tend to shy away from technology selection and understanding how the tools work (that's what we were presenting about) to the detriment of their projects. More fundamentally, enterprises underestimate the potential as well as the cost to making CMS and portal software more adaptable -- and therefore adoptable. That's actually good news. Poor software can be impossible to fix. Poor implementations can be avoided, or remedied.

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