So You Invested in an ECM System...What’s Next?

Activities that should be considered during this phase are:

• Defining project goals and business drivers;
• Defining project boundaries—identify what is within the scope of the project and what falls outside of the project, as well as the pre-established constraints within which the project should be delivered, including time, budget and/or technology constraints;
• Gaining an understanding of the high-level usage of the ECM system, so its functionality can be established and design trade-offs can be identified; 
• Estimating the entire project budget with low-level details for the next phase;
• Identifying risks and developing a risk mitigation plan; and
• Defining the change management communications plan.

Outcomes and deliverables of this phase include an executive summary of the core requirements with priorities and key constraints, a risk assessment and mitigation plan, a detailed project plan for analysis and design, an inventory of use-cases along with the actors for each and a change management and communications plan.

Phase Two—Analyze and Design
During phase two, customers should define all of the project requirements and design the technical architecture for their ECM implementations.

Activities completed as part of the consumption model design work stream include:

• Analyzing the site map, navigation model, visual design and page layout;
• Defining metadata and security models; and
• Designing page rendering and conversion templates.

Within the contribution model work stream, companies should define authoring and workflow processes, visual design, metadata and security models as well as analyze existing content and define a migration process and plan. During phase two, customers also need to define the technical architecture, infrastructure and design of their ECM implementations.

The outcomes and deliverables of this phase include workflow analysis and design; taxonomy and metadata definition; permissions and security requirements; content analysis, source identification and mapping; consumption and contribution template design; detailed use-cases and wire frames; technical architecture diagrams, descriptions and models; migration plan; software installed in development environment; testing approach and test plan; and a detailed project plan for the build and test phase.

Phase Three—Build and Test
In phase three, customers should develop, test and deploy all of the functionality within their ECM implementations. Activities include:

• Creating consumption and contribution templates;
• Creating metadata and taxonomy models;
• Developing and configuring security and workflow;
• Installing and configuring software in quality assurance and production environments;
• Migrating existing content;
• Conducting regression testing;
• Optimizing performance characteristics;
• Testing to ensure adherence and conformance to evaluation criteria;
• Converting and migrating content; and
• Transitioning into production.

At the end of this phase, all functionality should be developed, tested and ready in the production environment for end users. In addition, all integrations, documentation and manuals should be complete; unit, system and acceptance tests are finished; and content is imported from previous sites.

Phase Four—Deploy
At this point in the implementation, an organization should be ready to transition the ECM solution to end users. There are three primary activities that occur during this phase:

• Completing agreed-upon defect resolution and finalizing product deliverables;
• Ensuring the customer has received all information needed for continued maintenance of the system; and
• Training internal trainers and conducting end-user training.

It is critical that knowledge is transferred from consultants to the customer throughout a project to ensure an organization can continue to successfully build upon its ECM implementation beyond the initial deployment.

A critical component of this process is developing an internal group that serves as a governing body responsible for creating and enforcing standards that establish how a company will use an ECM system within its organization beyond the initial implementation. For example, this "center of excellence" would provide various resources such as application development standards and product expertise to subsequent project teams as they embark upon new initiatives on the ECM platform.

One Size Does Not Fit All
While the basic requirements of an ECM implementation remain the same, several factors specific to a given customer will determine the amount of consulting services support needed. A consulting services offering should be flexible and only deliver the support necessary for a rapid and successful deployment.

Figure 1 (see PDF version; also on P.7 of ECM Supplement) illustrates the types of consulting services that will likely be needed, depending on the scope and complexity of an implementation.

In all cases, the implementation methodology and work streams described above can cross all content management elements—from Web content management and document management to collaboration, records and retention management and digital asset management—to consistently deliver successful ECM implementations, whether you are deploying your first ECM project or rolling out the last project in an enterprisewide initiative.

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Stellent, Inc. (www.stellent.com) is a global provider of content management software solutions that drive rapid success for customers by enabling fast implementations and generating quick, broad user adoption.