The five stages of CMS grief
Categorised under: Content management
The CMS Myth writes about the five stages of CMS grief. To quote:
While a unified CMS strategy can be smart for the organization, it takes control away from independent web authors, changing web publishing life as they know it forever.
Dealing with the loss of total web authoring control and conforming to new rules can be tough for anyone. Coming to accept (and even love) the benefits of a new platform can take some time.
We’ve identified five stages of CMS grief that can occur though this transition. Organizations that can spot the signs will be better equipped to help make the process smoother.
James Robertson is the Managing Director of 
3 Comments:
Very interesting and well timed (for me) post… these stages look like they replicate in many ways for pre-CMS grief. Would anyone agree that another way of dealing with the stages is have external expert advice delivered to the audience to combat the political side of people assuming you are only working with your own department in mind?
No, Craig, I wouldn’t. While using consultants can reduce intra-agency warfare – everyone can blame the consultant – once the CMS is actually in, you’ll still have people trying to go around it and pleading their special case. At these times, deploy the webmaster’s most important tool, the word ‘no’.
I agree with Brian on this. As one such consultant
, I think we can add some clarity around content management systems, as well as setting appropriate expectations. But the organisation still has a journey to go on, which can sometimes be a painful one…