The distribution chain analogy is extremely helpful and I think we can all see measures at different positions in the chain.
The wholesaler will evaluate the cost benefit balance when considering which fridge trucks to buy because it will directly impact his ability to deliver to his customers, many of which will have contractual service level agreements. The supermarket will usually have clauses that state "less than 1% of deliveries to be innaccurate or incomplete" and will measure that. Web users measure sites in the same way - for news sites people judge based on the timeliness and quality of reports on issues that matter to them - their implied SLA. For product sites the consumer is looking for something and judges based on their ability to find it. They then make a buying decision based on price, brand, trust etc. It is the wholesaler's, or business manager's, job within the wholesale or content-delivery link in the chain to specify what is needed in order for them to perform the job as best they can. These tests will usually not revolve around functionality, a fridge truck doesn't vary that much! What varies are the non-functionals or quality metrics, the meantime between failure, the availability of the systems, the frequency and scope of loss of data accidents etc. While I agree that the spoilt lettuces may well be a human error issue it could also be an issue with the refigeration unit on the truck. The balance between human failure and machine failure will be affected by the frequency of machine failures. Hence, buy a better truck and you should get fewer issues. But when I say better you have to take _all_ quality requirements into account - the MTBF, the ease-of-use of the unit, the ease-of-maintenance and so on. If the system is mis-configured is that human error or an issue with the quality of the configuration tools and interface? What concerns me about those comments that say that CMS implementations are difficult or impossible to measure is that business leaders will not continue to buy that. When the money was a VC's and times were flush, maybe, but not now. Perhaps the lack of intelligent, objective measures is the reason that _most_ cms implementations are absurdly expensive and deliver little or no perceived benefit once implemented? For those working in an XP or Agile development arena this is the test. If you're business user can't define the test that the system must pass then you are at liberty to say "it's done" and take the money. A trend we seem to see a lot of in the CMS marketplace. To say that a product has no directly and objectively measurable benefits is to say "don't buy this". cheers mmmmmRob __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com -- http://cms-list.org/ trim your replies for good karma.
