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Really [Structured] Requirements

by Scott Althouse

At Seybold San Francisco 2002, a panel session included representatives from a number of content management system (CMS) vendors. The moderator posed the following question to the panel: "Why do so many content management system implementations fail?" Without exception, the responses from the vendors included a statement regarding their customers' lack of or changing requirements. In New York University's and Really Strategies' The [Bracket] Report: Publishers' Adoption of Content Management Systems and Technologies, 55.6% of respondents stated they would "be more structured about requirements definition and sign off" if they were to start over again and implement a content management system.

If you're heading into a content management endeavor, you should understand that the single reason most software implementation projects fail, whether they are enterprise applications or small integration projects, is the lack of adequate requirements definition or the subsequent failure to manage changes to requirements. Content management system implementations are no different. Here are a few pointers for effectively developing and managing requirements.

What's in a requirement anyway?

Requirements are the way in which we express our technical and business needs. Too often a requirements definition effort is targeted at describing "how" something is to be done, while the description of "what" is to be done is omitted or only vaguely alluded to. "We need an XML database to store our content" is very different from "We need a way to manage our content to allow multiple systems to easily access our content." Perhaps an XML database would help solve your needs, but "easily accessing content from multiple systems" is a clearer description of the problem that you are trying to fix, something that a database alone is unlikely to resolve. Such clarity makes it much more likely that the people who actually select and implement your solution will do so in a way that meets your needs.

The list trap

Another common mistake is to simply make a list of desired feature/functions, and then to check off what solution does which list items. Typically, the list includes only a brief description and maybe a weighting factor to indicate the most desirable features. What's missing is the consideration of your business needs as well as the context of the requirements. Many product decisions are based on this method, typically leading the resulting system's users to wonder why the chosen product doesn't do what they expected. A better solution is to capture your requirements in a format that addresses how the system is to be used, and to avoid feature descriptions as much as possible. Use Cases are a popular and effective means for describing how people will interact with a system without getting hung up on technology or implementation choices.

Do your requirements give you the "creeps?"

It's not reasonable to expect that what you believe to be your requirements for a content management system today will be the same tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. How you use any system will likely change over time. Most content management system implementations take somewhere between 3 and18 months, and over this time your needs (requirements) for the system may change. This phenomenon is known affectionately as "scope creep." Scope creep can have two different effects: the system never works, or it doesn't do what you want it to do. To minimize the impact of requirement changes, you first need to accept that it's going to happen and establish a framework in which changes and their impacts can be managed.

Next, plan to implement your system incrementally. Each increment (iteration) of the CMS implementation should support a subset of your requirements and should result in the delivery of capability that your users can make use of right away. You should schedule the most important requirements to be delivered first with subsequent iterations adding less critical capabilities. Implementing this way allows users to provide incremental feedback, thereby avoiding disappointment at the end of a long and expensive development project.

By correctly defining your requirements, organizing them into a useable structure, and managing them over time, you can greatly increase your odds of successfully implementing a content management solution that will serve your business needs.