1.
Why Content Projects Fail
…and what we can do about it.

2.
Content projects fail.

3.
Five reasons why they fail.
Five things we might do to prevent it.

4.
Spoiler:
None of these problems are technical

5.
How Projects Fail
• Abortive
Fails to launch
• Quantitative
Fails to make project numbers
• ROI / Goals
Doesn’t bring about desired change
• Expectations
“It just doesn’t feel like I thought it would.”

6.
Disclaimer
This is not meant to be accusatory.

7.
#1
Case Study Syndrome

8.
You know what you’re doing.
You have a very limited and
slanted view of what other people
are actually doing.

9.
Case Study Syndrome
• “I read this in a case study, so clearly
everyone is doing it.”
• People don’t produce case studies about
things that didn’t happen.
• Form of Survivor Bias.

10.
No one writes case studies about
the 99% of companies that aren’t
doing anything interesting.

11.
“The Law of Narrative Gravity posits that
the public and press are drawn to
narratives, and the more widely accepted a
narrative, the more it attracts and shapes
the perception of facts.”
− Aaron Zamost for
BackChannel

12.
Case Study Syndrome is the sum
total of all the things you’re
convinced you should be doing.

13.
Doesn’t fit your market.
Not enough staff.
Not the right skills.
You probably have bigger
problems.

14.
Case Study Syndrome steals
attention away from more critical
problems that you can actually
solve.

15.
#2
Development Myopia

16.
Building a New Home
• Deciding to move
• Developing floor plans
• Buying a lot
• Budgeting for construction
• Apply for financing
• Preparing to move
• Actually moving
• Redecorating
• Buying new stuff
• Learning how to use new
stuff
• Planning new services
• Planning new commute
• Changing vehicles
• Changing schools
• Sending address changes
• Throwing a house-
warming party
Transitioning to a New Home

17.
We tend to focus on what we think
is (1) novel or (2) risky.

18.
Training / Re training
Migration
Internal Marketing / Reporting
Governance
Infrastructure

19.
Tool
Productization
Sales and Marketing
Ecosystem
Multi-User
Scaling

20.
Far more projects have failed over
non-development issues than
vice-versa.

21.
#3
Control Fixation

22.
We often want effort put into
things that don’t provide much
measurable value but make us
think we’re in “control.”

23.
“I love it when a plan comes together.”
− John “Hannibal” Smith

24.
Control Fixations
• Workflow
• Dashboards
• Multi-site management
• Exhaustive content management
• Form building
• Pseudo-application development

25.
“Return on Management”

26.
More effort has been wasted
chasing control more than almost
any other aspect of a website
project.

27.
#4
Deus Ex Machina

28.
The Truth
• There’s a good chance significant parts of our problem
originated external to technology
• We tend not to look to people, governance, or process,
because these things exist now
• If problems could been fixed without new
technology…why weren’t they?
• It’s easy to say, “things will be better when we have
new technology because we’ll have something we
don’t have now.”

29.
Software is one aspect of a
content environment, and it’s
rarely the most important one.

30.
#5
Big Bang Syndrome

31.
Things that leave on Day 2…
• Your budget
• Your staff
• Your contractors
• The attention of the C-level
• Any sense of urgency
• Your enthusiasm
• Your job?

32.
Many projects never make the leap
from project to product.
In reality, the only time a website
is “done” is when it’s permanently
removed from the Internet.

33.
Launch day is not the finish line.
It’s the starting line.

34.
1. Case Study Syndrome
2. Development Myopia
3. Control Fixation
4. Deus Ex Machina
5. Big Bang Syndrome

35.
OMG, this is depressing.

36.
Five Things We Can Do

37.
#1
Put First Things First

38.
Stop trying to solve Problem B
before you’ve solved Problem A.

39.
Questions to Ask:
Content Strategy
• Do you know who your audiences are?
• Do you know what they want from your
organization?
• Not your website; your organization
• Do you know how they try to get it from your
website?
• Do you have content to fill those needs?

40.
Audience Need Behavior Content

41.
Questions to Ask:
Content Management
• Can your editors publish a page of content
according to their own standards of quality?
• Can your editors aggregate content according
to their own needs?
• Can they collaborate as a team to their level
of satisfaction?
• Can they do this without unreasonable
frustration?

42.
Questions to Ask:
Governance and Stakeholders
• Who is your ultimate stakeholder?
• What is their model of success?
• Are they comparing this project to others?
• (Spoiler: yes)
• Which projects, and what about those
projects makes them a model of success?

43.
“Six months after this project
launches, what needs to happen
for us to think that it was all worth
it?”

44.
We’re so determined to be
amazing that we don’t stop to
check that we’re any good.

45.
#2
Plan from True Beginning
to True Ending

46.
Do not fixate on development.

47.
Build Web Site
Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 5 Task 6 Task 7 Task 8 Task 9

48.
Non-Implementation Tasks
• Governance planning
• Training / Retraining
• Internal Marketing
• Post-Occupancy
Evaluations
• Content Migration /
Operations
• Load testing
• Documentation
• QA and Rework
• Political / Organizational
Disputes
• Post-Launch Revisions
• Staff Turnover / Continuity
• Editorial Optimization

49.
Pretend that the actual build is
guaranteed.
What else do you have to do?

50.
Start: “Hey, maybe we should do
something about the website…”
(time passes…)
Start: Development Begins
End: Website Launches
(time passes…)
End: “Hey, aren’t you glad we did
something about the website?”

51.
#3
Keep Rough Edges in
Context

52.
Vendors and integrators are in an
arms race of promises, fueled by
irrational belief from customers.

53.
“One-Stop Shop”
“Integrated”
“Seamless”
“Unified Platform”
“Perfect”

54.
Perfect is the enemy of good
“Return on Management” is a
perfectly valid decision factor.

55.
Factors to Determine ROM
• Frequency of the situation addressed
• How often does it occur?
• Lead time of the situation addressed
• How far will we be able to see it coming?
• Post-launch proximity to the people who can
address it
• Can we reasonably code-source something to
save budget?

56.
Have honest, direct conversations
about budget/polish trade-off.

57.
Cutting corners is sometimes a
perfectly acceptable practice.

58.
#4
Don’t Confuse Means and
Ends

59.
Technology is a means, not an end.

60.
It’s perfectly reasonable to source
content and functionality from
outside the CMS.

61.
Spend your money on things that matter.

62.
#5
Set the Stage for
Incremental Improvement

63.
This is a process, not a moment.

64.
The Sad Truth: Some things just
won’t work…
• It won’t fit your content/marketing model
• You won’t be able to staff it
• Existing staff will turnover
• A “feature champion” might leave
• Your plans will change over time
• It may have just been a bad idea

65.
You need to indoctrinate your
organization to incrementalism.
If you don’t like something, just
wait a minute…

66.
“We’re programmers. Programmers are, in
their hearts, architects, and the first thing
they want to do when they get to a site is
to bulldoze the place flat and build
something grand. We’re not excited by
incremental renovation: tinkering,
improving, planting flower beds.”
− Joel Spolsky

67.
“I was drawn to medicine by the aura of
heroism—by the chance to charge in and
solve a dangerous problem.”
− Atul Gawande

68.
“Success is not about the episodic,
momentary victories. It is about the longer
view of incremental steps that produce
sustained progress.”
− Atul Gawande

69.
Incrementalism is where
innovation happens.

70.
1. Put first things first
2. Plan from true beginning to true ending
3. Keep rough edges in context
4. Don’t confuse means and ends
5. Set the stage for incremental improvement

71.
Why do content projects
fail?

72.
All sides of the
customer, vendor, integrator
triad are guilty of posturing.

73.
Realism
Honesty
Advocacy

74.
deane@blendinteractive.com
@gadgetopia
http://gadgetopia.com/