James, you know this is the type of CM debate I live for. ;-) I stand behind my original assessment. Attempting to measure the cost efficiency of CMS by way of content freshness, quality, effectiveness, or accuracy is absurdly tantamount to measuring Adobe Photoshop by the creativity, freshness, quality, and originality of the images artists produce with it.
Tell me, how do you propose that we measure the accuracy of the content managed by a CMS? or the quality of the content? or the effectiveness? We can't. They're not useful CM metrics (and I've yet to encounter particularly useful CM metrics) Look at content freshness. I'll use a news publishing example. For the sake of discussion, let's say a particular CMS provides the ability to publish content to an Internet site on a specific interval, or at a specific date/time. Further, let's assume that CMS is able to expire content from the site after n units of time, or on a specific date/time. If I edit dozens of [breaking and current event] stories and configure the system to publish the stories immediately upon approval and expire or archive the stories after n days, is content freshness a measure/result of my publishing decisions or the CMS? What if I had chosen to configure the system to publish all stories 3 weeks after approval? I suppose one could argue that a particular CMS doesn't offer a temporal granularity that is fine enough to accommodate an organization's publishing requirements - perhaps it only allows users to publish content in 24 hour intervals while they require up-to-the-minute publishing. If that were the case I dare say users needn't worry about calculating the CMS's ROI or "efficiency" - they should look elsewhere for a solution. Well, I do look forward to reading your findings next year. I hope you'll share them with us. Joe ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Robertson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 4:43 PM Subject: Re: [cms-list] Are there ways to measure the quality, effectiveness, accuracy and timeliness of content? > At 23:35 18/11/2002, joseph martins wrote: > > >All four metrics are highly subjective and multidimensional. What is > >quality? effectiveness? and accuracy? What does it mean to be up-to-date > >Such things are a measure of the people and their processes, not the CMS. > > > >Re: measuring content freshness. A CMS could certainly enforce > >publish/expiration rules to maintain content freshness (many already do), > >but it's the people who craft the rules and set the values for pub date and > >expiration date. > > > >In my opinion, none of the four belong in an analysis of a CMS > > I completely disagree. > > A CMS must be expected to deliver *business* benefits, > beyond some vague efficiency gains or additional > functionality. > > Very often (at least for my clients), one of those goals > is to "Deliver timely, accurate and up-to-date information". > > For every goal, there should be metrics measuring > whether this has been reached. > > To the original poster: unfortunately, I haven't > yet come across good measures for these aspects. > This is my current area of interest, and hopefully > in six months or so, I will have greater insight. > > Cheers, > James -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
