Hi Pascal and others. This subject is very dear to me too :). Within this I believe your effort is very interesting and sure the three benefits that you intent to measure are of up most importance.
It seams to me that your thesis is aiming to answer the following question: What makes cost efficient/effective CM implementation? This is something as Joseph pointed that it cannot be measured effectively (hehe - use of "effective" again) without a context. But we can consider it from a relative detached perspective (which seams to be you aim). In order to do this it is my humble opinion one needs at least to reckon that the context of CM process is a content development project (need an article about X, writers write the article, need images and photograms, etc). A content development project has a title that encompasses a generic objective, for instance, "Write a book about CM Patterns". Any project of any sort is little more then a collection of activities, resources, and communication channels, with at least one specific purpose or goal to achieve within a given time frame. However this is a very general definition and it could define a project for building a bridge, constructing an ocean liner, or landing a mission on Mars. Therefore more specifically within this scope you need to find out what are the common components of a content development project. They certainly include: * Some statement of purpose * A list of roles that people play on the editorial process. * People with requisite skills and experience * Set of well bounded communication procedures * A Set of technologies (the CMS) * An Architecture I also suggest also that you look at the benefits that you are trying to measure not as absolute quantifiable values but as a spectrum. For instance, consider Quality. According to Philip Crosby's definition, quality can be simple defined as conformance to requirements - How often content is what is required. The question that Gerald Weinberg points out, is, required by whom and what and according to what requirements (an in part Joseph)? One can split Quality into external (content readers) and internal views (content developers and managers). These two facets of Quality are of course related. Low internal quality makes it much, much harder to maintain high external quality. As examples of external and external quality point of views take the following: Internal Quality ---------------- *) CMS Administrators will look at quality in terms of ease of maintenance and enhancement. *) Editors will look at quality in terms of compliance to standards and convention, and the ability to deliver useful content on time. *) Project sponsors will look at how well the System meets their business requirements. Does it allow them to meet a constantly changing business environment and be proactive and be proactive in meeting the changes that are ever present in their business market? *) When we add to these views of writers, designers, and support personnel, you can see that we need to look at quality as a spectrum. Writers and Editors view the CMS more in terms of internal quality. External Quality ---------------- *) Readers and business sponsors tend to view the system more in terms of external quality. As you can see you have internal quality at one end and external at the other. I've mentioned Quality, but one can do the same for the other vectors that you have mentioned. If you are searching for metrics within this realm of understanding I believe that for those three vectors you need to analyze the facilities/patterns provided by CMSs to help managers ..: 1) Coordinating Content Development & Deployment 2) Managing Content Development & Deployment IMO all the benefits are outcomes of this the two points. This two points are not mainly about how sophisticated the Template or Workflow engine of a CMS is, or If it publish pages statically or dynamically or even if the system refreshes content hourly or daily. Hope I provided some interesting information for you to think about. Unfortunately I have no metrics for you Pascal as I've not read still any paper about it concerning your subject. I too look forward to read your thesis if possible. Best regards, Nuno Lopes Independent Consultant. -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
