Workflow or Workclog?
By Martin White at 2003-11-24 00:00:00 |
As a consultant who specializes in advising on the selection and implementation of CMS software I have sat through a lot of vendor presentations. (One day I will write a novel based on my experiences – no one would believe that the stories are in fact true!).
The process usually starts with showing how easy it is to make a change to something like a press release, with the objective of demonstrating version control. The audience can cope with this, since it is no more than a specialized application of work processing. In the next step, the vendor demonstrates how easy it is for an organization to put rules in place to ensure that nothing untoward ever gets published on the intranet or web site.
At this point all senior managers wake up and sit up straight.
Deep down they are very concerned by the concept of distributed content contribution. They rather like having their webmaster in total control of what gets published. If any problems arise they know just who to blame! But now the new idea is that any staff member can publish content. Scurrilous comments on the size of the executive dining room could appear on the intranet in mere seconds. This must not be allowed to happen!
”Of course it shouldn’t” purrs the vendor’s demonstrator (who would be getting an Oscar for special effects if they worked in a film studio). “We have workflow management built into our system.” The next ten minutes are then spent showing how an email pops up in the in-box of the manager ultimately responsible for that particular content area, and the manager can then approve the content for publication, or ask for it to be revised. In theory this is just perfect as far as management is concerned.
Internal spam?
However, life is not that simple. I have no idea how many email messages arrive in the average email box each day, but I guess it would number in excess of a hundred in most organisations of a size to be considering a CMS. To add to daily wear and tear on the “delete” button will come any number of emails requiring the manager to click on a link, open up the content, and review it. This is where the problems start.
First, reading from a screen is not ideal for many types of content. In “CMS World” -- place inhabited only by vendor demonstrators -- all content seems to consist of short press releases. The reality is different, and almost certainly the manager will want to print content out to read it through. So immediately the printer starts to work at double its normal rate.
Second, having read it through the manager wishes to make some quite important changes. This is usually accomplished with a comments textbox on the review screen. Have you actually tried to write comments into a box like this about anything more that the fact that the name of the Managing Director is not spelled correctly? Ideally you would like to be able to annotate the text in the way that you are used to doing with the ”revisions” – or better yet, “comments” -- feature on Microsoft Word, but the latter facility is very rare indeed.
So the manager ends up adding at best a comment to the effect, “I think that the first paragraph needs tightening up,” and presses the “revise” button. Not terribly helpful to the content contributor.
We all need holidays
The next problem is in defining the workflow itself. In the average CMS seminar that I run only about 20% of delegates are familiar with Microsoft's diagramming package, "Visio." Ask how many have used Visio to create workflows -- as distinct from calendars or special graphics -- and even this number drops considerably.
Most organizations understand the concept of workflow, but usually it is implicitly built into the brains of staff and not explicitly set out in visual models. Staff know that if Manager A is away then either Manager B or Manager C will look over a report or the minutes of a meeting. Try building even the most simple of workflows for this and the complexity starts to show.
What happens if Manager A is away for the day on holiday? Will the system realize that they have not logged on and automatically transfer it to Manager B, or is there a way of alerting the content contributor to the fact that Manager A is away? In good workflow systems there are many options for customization, but the very fact all these options exist readily means that setting up the preferred route can take a lot of time and effort.
Managing metadata
Reviewing the text of a content item is one thing. Just as important is ensuring that the metadata has been correctly applied. This requires knowledge of the metadata that a reviewer of the content may not possess. However, if there is no review of the metadata not only will the content be lost in certain circumstances, but requirements to modify the metadata will be missed. Processes for the review of metadata tagging are therefore equally important, but probably even more time consuming.
It is probably not realistic to expect a content reviewer to comment on metadata, and so some form of sampling of content by the operations team is probably required, and probably outside of the workflow.
Less is more
In my view workflow applications should be used with immense discretion. If staff start to post inappropriate content onto the intranet (which is usually where the problem could potentially arise) then the matter should be dealt with under existing disciplinary processes. One warning shot publicly delivered is usually enough. Workflow applications can be very valuable where there is some legal or regulatory requirement, and especially if the content is to be published onto a public web site at some time in the future.
As a basic principle, every workflow application should be justified as enhancing the value of the content to the user, and not as a way of “controlling” content in some authoritarian way. By now hopefully you’ve seen how workflow can mean extra work for all concerned. In the event, make sure there is a pay-off to the actual content contributor.
And, as always, start small and simple. It will be much easier to grow the number of content processes controlled by workflow when the success of the initial processes is visible, and experience has been gained in implementing a workflow.
You should also implement specific training for managers involved in reviewing and approving content, so that they understand how to make best use of the system. Such training sessions will also give the operations team a chance to modify workflow templates and other CMS interfaces to make the process as effective and efficient as possible. Certainly a small group of managers should be involved in the initial development stages of the implementation so that usability and administration issues can be addressed before launch.
