Yikes! I have to plan an IT project

Sharon Machlis   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Management Stories  

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December 1, 2004 (Computerworld) -- BOSTON -- After 20 years of writing about technology issues, I'm beginning to get a small taste of life in the IT world by helping to select and implement systems for a major IT project. And I'm learning firsthand what IT people have told us for decades: It's not as easy as it looks.
Consultants and vendors claim they can do it all. End users are impatient with system shortcomings. Desires for a new system inevitably exceed budget. It's easy to fall victim to what we in the newsroom call "exploding head syndrome."
Computerworld is embarking on a major upgrade of its content management system, for both the print publication and Web site. As online managing editor, I'll be involved in a fair chunk of the online process. From time to time, I'll be reporting on my experiences with this project, with the caveat that I won't be going into too much detail (otherwise, no one will ever speak freely at meetings I attend; unlike our popular Security Manager's Journal, I'm not disguising my identity here).
Already, I'm living proof of the wisdom of including end-user stakeholders in a project from the outset. I'd be the first to admit that I'm one of the more demanding editors here in terms of our technology, and giving me an early and thorough view of the challenges involved in selecting a system will help keep my expectations realistic. It's hard to complain when you've had a voice in choosing the technology.
So far, a few of us have already taken a stab at devising a requirements document for what we want the new system to do. Then yesterday, I went to the first day of the Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies (which runs through tomorrow in Boston), where a presentation by author, teacher and consultant Bob Boiko convinced me that I'm alarmingly unprepared to help craft such a document. (Fortunately, we've got real IT people leading our project.)
Interestingly, Boiko cautioned that asking all of your organization's stakeholders what they need in a content management system (CMS) can leave yawning gaps of critical information when trying to decide what you need a system to do, be it content management or something even more complex. "Can people tell you what you need to know? Not usually," he said.
So much for all those years of trying to get IT folks out of the glass-walled room to talk to end users!
Boiko isn't saying, "Don't talk to users"; he does think that's important. He's just stressing that you need to do more than simply ask them what they need -- because they might not

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