24 November 2008 by Simon Mone
I have just read a blog by Gerry McGovern on the CMS Wire site with the title Web Content Migration: Disastrous Strategy in which he talks of the common migration strategy of migrate everything that you can regardless of quality. I agree absolutely with Gerry's point of view and have been involved in some projects that sound just like his example.
I have recently been talking to lots of our clients about migration given the current attitude towards Obtree/Livelink and one of my key 'Utopian' ideas is that you define your new content requirements and architecture with no reference to what you have. You decide what you need (ceteris paribus) and work back from there to design your migration logic and processes. In practise this is rarely possible for all sorts of reasons. Many years ago I worked as an Economist and much of the theory in that discipline falls down without the ceteris paribus constraint. Nevertheless, it is a good position to start from for migration projects.
I like Gerry McGovern, I was very impressed with him as a public speaker and he has real insight into the failings of web sites. I would like to cite him here...
'Why do we have such bad content?
- We allow the organization to publish puff, fluff and vanity, instead of focusing on the needs of our customers/staff.
- We don’t hire web content professionals. Instead we find the most junior person in the department and give them the job of managing the website.
- We don’t see the Web as a unique medium-we just take print content and print thinking and shovel it onto the Web.
- We don’t review and quality control. We have practically no processes to take old content off our website.'
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