I’ve also been on a team which opened the doors wide and gave access to (by which I mean “forced access upon”) any user whose job title could be interpreted as something to do with content. The end result – a majority of users who used the CMS so infrequently that they couldn’t remember their password, let alone how to use the system. And a tech team who spent many hours solving the casual users’ problems.

Both were in a corporate environment – marketing content, not a true publishing model – but neither way had any real editorial process built in. The former was a way to get out of having to do it, the latter just ignored it completely (or more accurately, assumed it would be done “offline”, i.e. outside of the CMS).

I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a middle ground. Perhaps only let in users who are truly regular content creators and who have a vested interest in contributing (i.e. it’s their job). A method for casual contributors to get their content out there would be nice, but it might be quicker and less painless to have a small dedicated team to just do it for them. A hybrid approach so to speak.

One other problem I’ve seen time and again is that that as soon as anything – including but not limited to a CMS – starts to bloat the accepted editorial process, people will circumvent it any way they can. It’s a neat trick to incorporate a new method into an accepted process in a way that gets widespread adoption.

I agree that a CMS can be a useful tool, but it needs expert – business, as well as tech – guidance from the start and a relentless focus on supporting and simplifying the existing processes. Too many implementations just make everything more difficult.

Oh, great — I love it when that happens!

I know you guys are very interested in process, and I think we share the underlying assumption that what makes content management systems succeed or fail is mostly people stuff, rather than tech stuff.

Thanks so much for writing your post and getting this conversation rolling.

Jeff Cram