Content Management and Collaboration
by Mark Phillips - January 17th, 2007Came across this post bemoaning the state of collaboration features available in enterprise content management solutions.
Our approach in Vertabase Pro is to offer collaboration and content management within the framework of doing projects (and using project management tools to accomplish and manage the projects).
What do you think of this approach?
After taking a look at the software, what recommendations or suggestions would you have for the content management component of the software?
Note: you can check out the software by clicking here. The content management features are in the Document section of Projects.
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January 17th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
I’m seeing a very ‘technical’ perspective to the design — a process totally separate from the reality it would hope to support.
I might pose my favorite question to vendors: If this is the answer, what was the question? The interface I see here is not the answer to any of the questions most people would be asking. This is simply one ‘twist’ of a solution and a perspective that was already in place.
It is, as is most other commercial solutions, neither innovative nor relevant.
That said, all is not necessarily lost. Good technologies are often led astray by a a lack of understanding of the level of investment required to achieve a good interface. Your solution suffers from this ‘me too’ symptom.
It’s time to rethink the number and quality of resources you have allocated to interaction design — unless and until the number exceeds the number of resources allocated to the technical implementation, you’ll still be short of your potential.
January 17th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Paula, thank you for your feedback. We’re actually on the same page in a lot of the things you mentioned.
There are years of testing, customer feedback and market experience behind our design.
The question it answers is how to deliver useful project management functionality to a non-technical audience. Based on the market’s reaction to our software, we seem to have answered the question well.
Granted, its not necessarily the most super common question people might ask in their lives, but to our market segment its the million dollar question. Often, when it has come to project management software helpful functionality has been wrapped up in design that is way too complicated for most people. Or, in the case of “old standards” like Microsoft Project, its required a decent amount of training to use the system effectively.
But you’ve clearly spent time thinking about these kind of design and interface issues. I would very much be interested in hearing your thoughts on which project management applications you think do a good job from a design perspective or effectiveness perspective.
Or, if you are talking specifically about content management or collaboration, which solutions do you think do it well?
January 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Project Management being a specific discipline that I have intentionally avoided throughout my career, my comments are specific to the perspectives of those involved in administering content management including the functions supporting collaboration.
It would appear that you have included the management of content and/or collaboration (supposedly) within a Project Management toolset.
This is wholly different than providing tools for Content Management and Collaboration…neither of which are bounded by projects and often are administered outside of the types of projects that qualify for project management.
So unless you’re offering something here that transcends project management activities, you’ve jumped into an ocean bigger than the pool you were expecting.
January 17th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
The problem has been that project management is something that people have avoided, to the detriment of their deliverables, production teams, clients and bottom-line.
There are few projects or processes we’ve seen, if any, that couldn’t benefit from being better managed.
Vertabase Pro makes useful project management tools and best practices accessible (and even enjoyable) to people who have tended to shy away from them throughout their careers.