-----Original Message----- From: Mark Baker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, 20 November 2002 8:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [cms-list] Re: Are there ways to measure the quality, effectiveness, accuracy and timeliness of content?
> 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. Not the ideal comparison, since Photoshop is a tool for the creation and manipulation of assets, not for the management of assets. A CMS is an asset management tool, not an asset creation tool (except in the case of single-sourcing systems). Lu: I agree with this clarification! A management system can have an impact on the freshness, quality, effectiveness and accuracy of the assets it manages. That impact can actually be measured more easily than these qualities themselves can be measured. Lu: I agree too. It's our task to find the measures, not the CMS. CMS can help us to track the data measured by our measures. Let's draw an analogy to fresh produce. Farmers are in the business of creating produce. Wholesalers are in the business of packaging, warehousing, and delivering fresh produce to stores. If content creators are farmers, and the web site is the supermarket, the CMS is the warehousing and transportation element of the system. Now, clearly the wholesaler cannot add to the quality, freshness, etc of the produce it handles. All it can do is minimize spoilage, deterioration, and loss, and to ensure that all orders are filled accurately (if you order apples, you get apples, not pears. If you order Royal Gala apples you get Royal Gala apples, not Fuji apples.) While the wholesaler cannot create quality, the role of the wholesaler is essential to maintaining quality. It is therefore very reasonable to measure the quality of the wholesaler by how well it manages to prevent loss of quality and to deliver orders accurately. How well a wholesaler measures up will be a function of two things: the quality of the wholesaler's processes, and the quality of the wholesaler's tools. A wholesaler that does now own refrigerated trucks, for instance, is not going to deliver high quality produce over long distances. It is therefore reasonable to ask how well a CMS system contributes to the maintenance, if not the creation, of the quality and accuracy of information and also to the speed and accuracy of delivery. However, we can take the analogy one step further and suggest that a CMS may have the capacity to allow the creation of higher quality content. Suppose that the wholesaler also deals in baked good. The wholesaler buys apple pies from a bakery. But the bakery also buys its apples from the wholesaler. Thus if the wholesaler can deliver fresher apples to the bakery, the bakery can make better pies. Thus the quality of the wholesaler has contributed to the creation of a superior product. Thus if the existence of the CMS makes it easier for content contributors to get the information they need to create new content, the CMS can contribute to the quality, effectiveness, accuracy and timeliness of content. It is, however, and enabler, not a generator. Its job is to minimizes spoilage, loss, and inaccurate order fulfillment. Quality is notoriously hard to measure. Spoilage, loss, and inaccurate order fulfillment are considerably easier to define and measure. Thus they are probably more accurate and more appropriate metrics to use for evaluating a CMS --- Mark Baker OmniMark Technologies Corporation 1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3 Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560 Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.omnimark.com -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma. EOM NOTICE - This message and any attached files may contain information that is confidential and/or subject of legal privilege intended only for use by the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient or the person responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this message in error and that any dissemination, copying or use of this message or attachment is strictly forbidden, as is the disclosure of the information therein. If you have received this message in error please notify the sender immediately and delete the message. --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
