What's Wrong With a Tridion Project Plan?

Technology supports your business. Not the other way around. No matter what system you're implementing, focus on your project goals and objects with the business opportunity (challenge) in mind.

Vendor Projects

The most visible and trackable results in anything project-related are the deliverables. These take the form of those "zero-length items" in your plan (MS Project and some Gantt chart tools use diamond shapes) that mean some objective has been met. Vendors might refer to them as toll gates but your project managers might opt for objectives or milestones. Bonus if you know the difference. I don't care what they're called, someone needs to keep track of them.
Your vendor will understand the deliverables they're responsible for very well; any professional services type organization does this type of work over and over again. What they can't replace, however is understanding your business opportunity or challenge. Vendors can help guide you in discovering your business requirements, especially if in a new domain. But customers are still responsible for the results of their project.

What's a Tridion Project?

Who do you Trust?

Think about the people you trust the most. You might not know why you trust them, but it's likely they have the following according to Stephen Covey's Speed of Trust. Replace "they" with the person, organization, or product you have in mind.

• Integrity - you believe they do and understand the right thing. They're "normal" in the sense they're not trying to cheat, break rules, or only consider their own needs.
• Intent - you believe they're trying to do the right thing.
• Capabilities - you believe in their skills and ability to deliver what they intend to do
• Results - they have consistently delivered for you (by answering questions or solving problems)

The amazing thing about trust is that, like a lot of other things, it's something you can improve.

We can improve our integrity, intent, capabilities, and results. Sometimes it's reconnecting with what's important, other times it's, "Less talk. More action."

Edit (8 July 2014): fixed some typos and grammar issues.

SDL Innovate 2012. So Much Content!

I miss going to conferences. I helped host a college-bound high school conference ages ago. I've attended  SharePoint and Gartner conferences as a prospective or existing customer. This was my first conference as an employee of the hosting organization. I attended mainly the WCM portions of SDL Innovate 2012 and am glad to:

• Hear CMS is more important than ever
• Confirm platforms matter
• Earn the nickname "Bloggy"

I could make several posts on all the content from the Innovate conference. I'll spare you and just highlight some things that left an impression on me.

CMS is Important

CMS is important. Ian Truscott, the North America VP of Products for SDL WCMS , explained CMS is essential to CXM (Content eXperience Management). He suggests the following equation:

Relevance + Variance  = Content Explosion

For example, anyone familiar with state-specific content, just adding a few categories to the 50 states (plus Washington DC) can easily get you hundreds to thousands of variants. I still have chills for the all-state, all-specialty updates I had to manually make in at least 255 individual XML configuration files.

The also means the page paradigm is dated, as Nuno Linhares, Principal Consultant with SDL WCMS, explains on his blog, "your content model must evolve from being page-centric to being customer-centric."

Does Platform Matter?

Forecast? Data. Lots of data!

SDL Tridion, The Most Interesting Man, and Chuck Norris

Which make better Tridion geek jokes?

• The Most Interesting Man in the World or
• Chuck Norris