> 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). >
I did not intend to offer an ideal comparison. I'm well aware of the difference between the two products. My intent was to demonstrate [using an absurdity] that a tool should not, and in most cases cannot, be measured solely on the basis of metrics that are both contextually subjective and clearly user [and input] dependent. > 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. > How well a wholesaler measures up is a function of three things: its processes, its tools, and (most importantly) its people. Notice I've left quality out of it - for reasons that will become apparent shortly, and I've included people. In the context of your analogy... the best refrigerated trucks in the world can't compensate the humans who maintain and control them. Similarly, the fastest, most accurate supply chain management or order fulfillment applications in the world can't compensate the human error of their users. If a half-spoiled shipment of 20 tons of lettuce arrives on your dock, who's responsible? Your wholesaler's $100K+ Kenworth T600 Navajo reefer unit? the driver? the truck's maintenance crew? the logistics team? A week later you've got 100 bushels of granny smiths sitting on your dock when you know that you ordered golden delicious - even the bill of lading clearly shows "golden delicious". faulty fulfillment software? mixed-up manifest? half-a** consolidator? freight forwarder? pickers and packers? yardgoat grabbed the wrong trailer? Tools are only as good as the people who use/maintain/configure/administer them. Your [abstract] perception of the quality of your wholesaler is one thing. The actual measure of the quality of your wholesaler [at the process, tool, and personnel level] is quite another. Isolating and measuring the contribution of a specific tool [or process] in any meaningful way is extremely difficult. What exactly is the contribution of a reefer unit to the perceived quality of a head of lettuce in your supermarket's produce section? What is the contribution of fulfillment software to the accuracy and timeliness of the orders that arrive on your dock every morning at 6am sharp? All this and I haven't even thrown brand into the mix. Brand can have an enormous impact on a person's perception of attributes such as quality and accuracy. > 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. > > If Pascal were interested in simply measuring a publisher's contribution to the perceived quality of an author's book I could offer some suggestions. Unfortunately Pascal wants to measure the contribution of the CMS. Undoubtedly there's a contribution, by I've yet to discover a reliable, meaningful way to quantify it. > 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. Quality in the abstract is easy to define and measure. It's quality in the specific that's more difficult to nail down. >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 A CMSs actual contribution to the quality, effectiveness, accuracy and timeliness of content is difficult to measure. And the differences in the contributions [between competitive CM products] are even more difficult, if not impossible, to measure. And even if you were able to obtain such measurements, I'd question the relevancy of your results outside the context of the environment in which your measurements were taken. Joe > --- > 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.
