Scenarios are narrative descriptions or stories that concisely outline how something will work in practice. In the context of a content management system (CMS) project, scenarios are a very effective way of documenting key CMS requirements, and they complement the formal lists of functional requirements typically found in tender documents. Content management scenarios provide a 'day in the life' description of how the CMS will be used, for example: Richard enters the text for the page, and creates a link to the supporting PDF. Once the content has been spell-checked, Richard submits the page for review by Jane, his manager.

“We’re extremely busy, and so are all the other vendors.” This is what I heard from a number of the vendors at the recent Open…

There are a lot of content management system (CMS) products in the marketplace, over 140 in Australia alone. There are new products springing into existence…

All too often, 18-24 month information management strategies fail to deliver benefits, but there is an alternative.

'Personalisation' is a term very much in fashion at present. It is used by vendors to sell their products, and promoted by website and intranet managers as a way of delivering a brave new era of functionality. Separate from debates regarding the merits and approaches to personalisation, there is considerable confusion about the meaning of the word itself. As the use of personalisation spreads, this confusion has grown. Personalisation is now routinely used for everything from 'my links' functionality, to fine-grained targeting of information to specific staff roles. The absence of consistent terminology in this space is now causing considerable

Due to technology improvements, personalisation is a growing feature in both intranet and portal usage. Organisations around the world have already made their first forays into personalisation, however many more organisations are questioning what to personalise and how to go about it. So who is using personalisation and how effective it is? Early in 2007 we ran a worldwide survey to establish the extent that personalisation is being used in intranets and portals. This article discusses the results of the survey, common themes within the survey and some observations on personalisation projects throughout the world. Comments from the survey respondents

This briefing draws a clear line between two separate functionalities: personalisation and segmentation.

This article discusses the results of a worldwide survey conducted to guage what extent personalisation is being used in intranets and portals.

The functionality of the content management system (CMS) is obviously a key deciding factor when purchasing a new product. Equally important is the usability of the CMS. If staff, particularly authors, cannot easily make use of the CMS, then the system will never be a success, regardless of how powerful it may be. The overall usability of CMS products, and their suitability for their intended users, is therefore increasingly closely scrutinised during the evaluation and selection process. One key challenge remains, however, which is how best to define (and ultimately evaluate) the 'usability' of a content management system. While there

I'm doing a lot of work at the moment helping organisations select a content management system. One of the key aspects of this is making sure that our clients get to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of each product, and the vendor demos the major way of achieving this. The first step is to prepare scenarios that outline a "day in the life" of the CMS, and to have these used as a "script" for the vendors. At the end of the session, we then use a very simple scoring scheme for each of the narrative requirements: Score Rating