Warning: rant incoming.
I have NEVER had a positive experience with a content management system (CMS). I kid you not – never. In fact, in some jobs, the CMS made my job objectively more difficult.
Which makes no sense, because based on the capabilities of these tools, they really should make your life easier and your documentation stronger.
So what happens? Here’s my theory – the features offered by a CMS, and the features implemented by your company, are two very different things. Here’s an analogy.
Let’s say you’re building a house, and you have an architect draw up some plans. You want a three story house with a grand spiral staircase, and a swingset in the backyard with two swings. Something like this:
You approve the plan, then leave town for 6 months
But when you get back, you find that your house is only 2 stories, the staircase is a standard design that doesn’t even go up to the second flow, and you have a swingset, but with only one swing, and a baby swing at that. Like this:
I mean, you can live here, but you won’t have as much room as you expected, and you need to add a ladder to the top of the stairs to make it to the second floor. And the swingset – I mean, at least you have one swing, but your kids are well out of diapers, so that’s sort of useless.
WTF HAPPENED?!?
What happened was the implementation.
When you evaluate CMS systems, they are going to show you every possible wonderful they can do. But, you have to pay for those features, and then your company has to implement to work with your existing content and systems. Sometimes, the seller will do the implementation as consulting work, meaning, big bucks.
So you chose a CMS based on the problems it could solve for you. You probably turned that in to requirements, and prioritized the requirements. And that’s when it all goes to hell.
When’s the last time any company you worked for budgeted enough time and money for any project? Yea. That’s what I thought.
In reality, to get those features you thought you were getting, its going to take 12 months of dedicated effort, and a LOT of money. More likely, your company is going to say “do it in 9 months for half the money you need, while you’re also working on other projects”.
Which is why you end up with a fraction of what you hoped for. And, there’s a good chance that in an effort to speed up implementation, decisions were made that make your daily work harder, not easier.
Look, I’m not saying CMS is bad (though I’ve yet to see one that really solves the content reuse problem). I’m just saying, don’t depend on what you see during the demo. For each feature that’s important to you, ask how much it costs, and how many hours that feature will take to implement. Then, find out what time and money your company is truly willing to put up for this project. Only when you have that information can you determine if the features your company can afford to implement are worth the money.