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In a content-management project, we think about planning big and implementing small. It is important that your system design address the entire problem domain, but initial activities should be kept small. That will allow us to minimize complexity and give users and support staff time to adjust to new ways of doing things. A good pilot can either be narrow and deep, exercising all aspects of structured authoring, or it can be broad and shallow, running a single, simple document though the entire process. A pilot project provides us with an opportunity to roll out some functionality of the project quickly and get immediate results. We can use the pilot to train staff, work out the details of your Information Model and content plans, and test the technology solution. A pilot project allows us to ensure that we have adequate processes in place to implement the content-management solution. The pilot project should be selected to test your organization's technology but also to identify process improvement opportunities and enhancements to your Information Model. What we learn from the pilot will help us hone your content-management solution to ensure its success. It's a critical phase that must not be skipped. The responsibility of the project manager is to establish the project goals, deliverables, and schedule as quickly as possible. It is especially important to include sufficient time for training the staff in the new processes and technologies. Usually, staff members will have to learn to write in a style suitable for modules that will be repurposed, think about creating topics that are suitable for multiple deliverables with multiple contexts, become comfortable with a new authoring tool, and learn to work collaboratively so that output will be consistent, well-structured, and reusable. We will help you select a project manager who is an excellent communicator and who has a strong, clear vision of what the final result should be. Many groups will be curious about the progress of the pilot project, even if they are not directly involved. Some of those groups or individuals will hope that the project will fail, justifying their objection to changing the way information development has always been done. During the course of the pilot project, we will help you use your project-management tools to track every activity. We will need this information to calculate cost savings and predict how long it will take to conduct subsequent projects. We will help you maintain comprehensive progress reports that will provide a record of project activities to be used to guide the complete rollout. DeliverablesThe outcome of Phase 4 includes the pilot project deliverables and the project-management records. In addition, we will provide an updated version of the guidelines for authoring in your content-management solution. A training framework for authors, the support team, and managers should be an outcome of your pilot. Once the pilot project is completed, we will write a project wrap-up report and hold a wrap-up meeting. At the wrap-up meeting, we will review with all team members and stakeholders what was successful, what challenges were encountered and solved, and what challenges remain. If you would like to learn more about any of our consulting services or you would like to talk to a representative about scheduling an activity, please email or call 303-232-7586. |
