8 Dimensions for CMS Technical Evaluation

8 Dimensions for CMS Technical Evaluation « Big Men On Content.

There are many places you can go to find information on the racking and stacking of CMS systems. Everyone has their preference and there is no shortage of experts who will evaluate your situation and conclude their favorite is the best for the job. Over the years I have developed a serious disdain for a common behavior among CMS buyers. All too often selections are made solely on the recommendations of the hired guns or by procurement weasels without genuine ownership of the technology. The end result is almost always a battered account manager, a frustrated implementation team and an exasperated user community running to the internet looking for a panacea they can buy without IT approval. The built in plausible deniability may save the career of a mediocre manager or two but the interests of the users are better served by taking the time to understand technological dimensions of content management.

Here I’ll identify eight categories for a technical evaluation of content management software. I like to think of these topics as dimensions rather than simply groupings of requirements. The needs of a given customer will expand and contract requirements within the dimensions and change the weight of one over the other. These are however the areas that I have traditionally used to determine best fit for my situation. The list is in alphabetical order so as not to imply one dimension’s importance over another even though certain preferences will be obvious.