We also all seem to agree that although you can devise fairly specific measures, they are necessarily content-specific.
My content is always 99.44% effective ;->
Where does the CMS come in? In my experience, ad hoc searching by modification dates, by collection + title + what have you, and being able to view the content are invaluable tools to answer questions that come up. Workflow reporting is also useful: # new, updated and deleted documents by collection and author, for example. But the numbers, by themselves tell you little. You must know the context and the nature of the content to infer any meaning.
The accuracy of content can only be determined by reading the stuff and comparing it to external information sources. This is the function of editorial review, possibly within a CMS managed workflow. I.e. Reviewing attorneys rarely log into CMS systems.
Effectiveness? Well, that will always be subjective and is probably an important component of quality. Technology can help in a limited way with quality: spelling and grammar checking, intelligent metadata collection, intuitive content previewing.
take it easy,
Charles Reitzel
At 08:43 AM 11/19/2002 +1100, James Robertson wrote:
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.
