Choosing a component content management system can be a daunting task at the best of times, and it gets even more complicated if you’re looking for one that will integrate well with a DITA-based workflow. There’s been a discusson of this recently on the dita-users mailing list and Seth Park provided some detailed and trenchant advice. With his permission, I’m reprinting his post here.
Seth Park is a DITA solutions designer at Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. and an active member in various DITA communities. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of his affiliations.
The following recommendations were formed while reflecting on personal experiences in vetting content management systems.
1. Don’t be afraid of a reputable consultant. Understanding whether you need a CMS and what feature set you need is a full-time job! You’ll waste a lot more time if you distract yourself from your “real” job and/or choose a product that does not hit your cost/return sweet spot. Also think about future costs if your solution is not scalable or not responsive to DITA feature releases. If you get a reputable consultant, you can stop here. Otherwise…
2. Start with your requirements, starting with your users. If you’re going to be changing the way people work, you are signing up for several years of hearts-and-mind campaigning. Make sure that (in addition to your compulsory OS requirements, editor integration, publication system integration, etc.) you’ve thought through each and every way each user will touch the system. If you have users that work entirely in Linux command line, make sure the CMS has an CLI interface/API.
3. You WILL be disappointed. There is no CMS on the market that meets all of your needs. Accept that and move on. Which tool/vendor provides the best workarounds or highest level of extensibility?
4. Beauty is a roadmap away. You have to start somewhere. Be able to say, “these are the things that we cannot support ever” and “these are the things we can support with further investment.”
5. Have an exit strategy. Standards-based XML publishing offers you a “future proof” solution. Dont blow it by getting sucked into a tool that
wont let you hop over to a different product line without a complicated, unsupported migration. It should be “DITA in, DITA out” so you can get on with your life if you dump your old vendor.
6. Seriously consider a software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach. Why buy and assume the overhead of CMS maintenance if you don’t have to? If your requirements and use cases are “normal” enough, you might get 90% of your goal with no effort. Even if you do not go with this solution long-term, it will be a good way to develop expertise with respect to CMS strategies. Again the exit strategy is CRUCIAL. You need to be at a point where you can say, “Thanks, but I’ll be taking my Barbie and going home” at any time.
7. Don’t over complicate it. Sometimes when you start looking for a CCMS, what you really need is better discipline or more writers. A CMS will
solve neither of those issues! You cant tool yourself out of a human issue.
8. Don’t expect good tool advice from dita-users. There are many very good people who support very good products listening, but most of them shy away from using this list as a marketing device (as they should). If you really want to understand the candidate pool, you’ll need to invest a lot of time reading analyst papers and talking with vendors…. this is where a consultant can greatly help.