RE: What/why is the CMS failure rate? (WAS: RE: ask for he lp)

Darrel,

To throw my observations in here, these are some reasons that projects fail.

-products sold as something they're not
	--It's a cms, a database front end, a search engine, a ...

-sales folks using "canned demos"
	--it's really cool that the product _can_ do what they demonstrate, but _will_ it "out of the box?"  If the product I'm buying doesn't do what you're showing me, don't show it.  And PLEASE don't show it to management.  (Apologies to management.)

-sales/marketing folks not being up-front with what costs what
	--I've seen products that have many modules that can do many really cool things, but each individual module is another license.  Many times, though, it's not clear until a vendor is selected and a contract is presented.

-people other than the actual end users picking / driving customization of the products.
	--I know businesses won't survive if end users hand picked everything, but in many cases they have never heard of the chosen product, don't know anything about it, and don't have a say in how it is implemented.  Most implementations are run by IS, or a small, select group from the end users, then forced upon the end users who end up having most of the customizations redone.

-businesses not having a clear goal
	--"We want a content management system."  Great.  What do you want it to do?  Most departments don't have a clear answer.  Fuzzy Requirements == Failure.

-end users (or whole departments) simply refusing to use the selected tool
	--believe it or not, whole departments will go outside of IS, purchase their own software and implement it themselves which they're not staffed to do.

-employee turnover
	--I've heard of projects being completely scrapped after a few key people quit or leave their position.  The new team comes in and wants something _they_ designed/bought.

Good luck.

Happy New Year (Gregorian calendar folks)!

bill


-----Original Message-----
From: Austin, Darrel [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2003 4:23 PM
To: cms-list-/[email protected]
Subject: What/why is the CMS failure rate? (WAS: RE: [cms-list] ask for
he lp)


> CMS that encompasses all of these elements - they complain that the
> tool set is overly complex, needs significant customization, and
> usually does not deliver as expected - leading to the high rate of
> CMS failure - forcing the customer to homegrow CMS components on top
> of the existing 'end-to-end' system.

Graham triggered some question I'd like to pose:

  1) How high is the actual CMS failure rate?

  2) If it is high, why?

  3) Why are there still so many bad (or incorrectly marketed) 
     CMS products out there?

I got my hands dirty with CMSes these past two years. I'm certainly not an
expert, but I haven't been too overly impressed with the CMSes I've had to
use over the past two years or so...

- Worked with a client using Autonomy. It was sold to the client as a
CMS/portal when it very clearly wasn't. We did find it a fine search engine
(though a bit clumsy) and instead had to outsource a hosted CMS product to
handle the actual CMS

- The hosted product was far from intuitive, but semi-usable after some
training.

- At my current gig, I (as part of a team) spent several months
researching/analyzing products and finally chose Web500. While a good
product, it was sold to us as something it wasn't. In a matter of weeks we
scrapped it. It was a failed CMS product for us.

- Feeling defeated, suckered, and stupid for buying something that, in
hindsight, just plain didn't work, I attended a local internet conference a
few weeks later. On the schedule was a CMS session hosted by two CMS experts
from a highly reputable State University Business School. I thought I might
learn something. Turns out that they had a mirror story to mine. They spent
months researching products, finally hiring a vendor to custom build a
product only to find that two weeks after launch that the product was awful
and was in no way going to meet their needs. This brought up comments from
the audience and there were, again, similiar stories.

While I obviously have a very small amount of exposure to the CMS products
out there, my exposure has been pretty consistently bad. And it sounds like
this isn't uncommon based on some recent comments in here.

So, I just thought I'd toss out the open ended 'why?' question to see what
comes up. Are CMS vendors simply selling their products to the wrong
clients? Are they not trully 'getting' what clients really need? Are clients
not trully understanding what they need? Are CMS consultants all scam
artists? Are the wrong people buying the products? Does everyone get to
leave early from work on NYE except for me?

-Darrel

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