Rating: 
Summary: Fast becoming a BEST PRACTICE
Review: "Managing Enterprise Content " is a necessity for those planning to introduce content management into their organization. For those who find themselves in the midst of a content management nightmare today, "Managing Enterprise Content" is equally valuable. The book is chock full of valuable insight -- read it and you'll likely find out why your system isn't living up to the content management hype. Regardless of your situation, if you've got an interest in content management -- or if you just want to know why in the world you need to know about this stuff anyway -- check out the book's companion web site... for a solid overview of the strategy, a free chapter from the book, an Return on Investment (ROI) calculator, glossary, white papers and more! The content on this site is extremely useful and is indicative of the quality content found in the book. Fast becoming a "best practice" in many industries. Fits well into Six Sigma shops. Should be on the bookshelves of both IT and business professionals. Writers, editors, information architects, instructional designers, web masters, XML professionals, records and data managers, publishers, educators, consultants and managers of content of all types can benefit from this practical, common sense approach.
Rating:
Summary: Destined to be a Classic
Review: Ann Rockley's broad experience in the evolution of the thought and practice of enterprise content management shines in this great primer for everyone interested in ways to think about, plan and implement a unified content strategy. The book is a good introduction to the significant benefits of breaking down the walls between authoring groups (silos), and to the (big!) potential ROI of planned content reuse from financial and resourcing standpoints. Rockley examines types of reuse, and demonstrates why you MUST manage your content. She provides practical examples and a comprehensive approach that an organization can take to plan, develop and implement a unified content strategy. And she doesn't sugarcoat the real growing pains that are involved. If you've never heard of enterprise content management, read the book for a new way of thinking that can save your company time and money. And if you're a frustrated veteran of the trenches, read it for a comprehensive and practical guide to developing a content strategy that works.
Rating:
Summary: Content Management Made Simple
Review: Ann Rockley, in her book "Managing Enterprise Content", clearly demonstrates her infinite experience as a domain expert in the content management arena. Her book provides a comprehensive guide for effectively building a unified content strategy while differentiating content management technologies. This book gives guidelines and concepts to follow for planning, developing, and implementing a successful content management strategy. It also identifies issues to be considered and provides a plan to identify an ROI for the project. There is something for everyone - authors of content, managers of content, and designers of the content architecture. The book is written in a well-organized manner and breaks each main topic of content management into its own part, enabling readers to easily follow the process. Within this one book, an entire strategy is laid out, along with recommendations for resources and tools. "Managing Enterprise Content" is highly recommended for all organizations that truly want to understand the business benefits of managing the content life cycle.
Rating:
Summary: Content Management Made Simple
Review: Ann Rockley, in her book "Managing Enterprise Content", clearly demonstrates her infinite experience as a domain expert in the content management arena. Her book provides a comprehensive guide for effectively building a unified content strategy while differentiating content management technologies. This book gives guidelines and concepts to follow for planning, developing, and implementing a successful content management strategy. It also identifies issues to be considered and provides a plan to identify an ROI for the project. There is something for everyone - authors of content, managers of content, and designers of the content architecture. The book is written in a well-organized manner and breaks each main topic of content management into its own part, enabling readers to easily follow the process. Within this one book, an entire strategy is laid out, along with recommendations for resources and tools. "Managing Enterprise Content" is highly recommended for all organizations that truly want to understand the business benefits of managing the content life cycle.
Rating: 
Summary: Review of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Str
Review: Are you overwhelmed with the need to create more content, faster, customized for more customers, and for more media than ever before? Do you consider storing documentation on a server as an effective a content management system? Do you want to learn how content management will empower your organization? The answer to these questions and many more is covered in Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann Rockley with Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning of The Rockley Group. The Rockley Group is one of the leading providers of content management methodologies. Managing Enterprise Content provides concepts, strategies, guidelines, processes, and technical options that will prepare you to meet the increasing demands of creating, managing, and distributing content. It describes techniques that will help you define your content management requirements, build your vision, design your content architecture, select tools, and overcome obstacles of managing enterprise content. It will help you to visualize the spectrum of enterprise content, the requirements for effectively creating, managing, and delivering content, and the value of developing a content strategy for your organization. That¡¦s a lot of information for one person to understand. That¡¦s why the book is written for three audiences: content managers, information architects, and authors. Managing Enterprise Content follows the same methodical approach that Rockley uses to teach content management in seminars and workshops. I was expecting the book to jump into the technologies to implement a content management system. But that¡¦s not how Rockley presents content management. She begins with The basis of a unified content strategy and describes how content is created, who creates it, why authors work in isolation, and the consequences of isolation and centralizing content. The solution is to consolidate content in a definitive source, and a process that encourage authors to work collaboratively. The next step is to assess opportunities for content reuse. If you have never heard the term ¡¥reusing content,¡¦ you may know it as single sourcing. You probably already reuse content (i.e. copy and paste), which works well until the information, and everywhere that it appears, must be updated. Content reuse involves using existing content components (e.g. paragraphs, sections, and chapters) to develop new documents. Implementing a unified content strategy is a costly investment: tools, technologies, and training are not cheap. Investment costs are incurred in technology, training and consulting, and lost productivity. Examples are given to calculate the cost of authoring tools, content management systems, training and consulting¡Xa content management system is not a plug and play, one size fits all solution. The return on investment is achieved by reduced time to market, reduced cost of product content development, improved accuracy and quality of content, and reduced manufacturing defects. The examples are especially helpful because you will need to create a proposal to convince budget holders and management on the return on investment of a content management solution. Are you ready to buy a content management system? Not yet, read further. ¡§Performing a substantive audit: Determining business requirements¡¨ begins with an introduction on how to determine goals that you want a unified content strategy to solve, for example:
„h Reduce the time to plan, write, review, approve, and publish
„h Create flexible content that is easily reused to create information products for multiple products and multiple media
„h Reduce the cost of translation by reusing existing translations.
„h Make content more accessible; separating content from format makes it possible for content to be displayed automatically in a format appropriate to the disability.
Rockley describes how to identify opportunities where a unified approach of content management (i.e. planning, design, authoring and revision, version control, access control, publication and delivery to its audiences) is beneficial. You are probably wondering how this all fits together, and Rockley explains how. ¡§Design¡¨ describes information modeling and metadata, how to personalize content, how to design a workflow, and how to implement your design. An information model is critical for a unified content strategy because it provides a framework for documentation. It's the 80/20 rule: 80% of your effort is planning and analysis, and 20% of your effort is implementing the solution with whatever tools are selected to accomplish the goals the organization has set for itself. The level of detail of your information model depends on the level of reuse you want to achieve. Many desktop publishing tools can dynamically publish personalized letters and forms by matching elements such as names and address¡Xa content management system can do the same. I was confused why design is given so much attention. Why not conduct the audit, buy the tools, and worry about design later? You can¡¦t. The design of information, reuse models/maps, meta data and workflow are all tool independent tasks. Regardless of the tools selected, you must first analyse and then design a content or information model so that it can be presented to IT staff and software vendors. Doing this in advance makes it possible for you to ask vendors to respond to a request for proposal and document how their tools can help you satisfy your specific challenges. Analysis provides an opportunity to collect metrics. From your information models, you can identify how much of your content could be reusable and where. Educated on how content is used, where and how, you are better prepared to match the tools and technology to the origination¡¦s goals to deliver a unified content management solution. ¡§Tools and technologies¡¨ offers guidelines for evaluating tools. With so many tools and technologies to choose from, selecting the one that best satisfies your goals and budget is a challenge. Your best advantage is to be an educated consumer before you shop around. Rockley recommends that you identify your needs, and criteria for evaluating product options in terms of usability, training provided, supporting documentation provided, technical support, upgrades and enhancements, implementation time, cost, vendor viability, partnerships the vendor has to provide an expanded solution, and references. Where do you being looking? Some good sources are conferences where vendors present authoring solutions such as the annual STC conference, electronic mailing lists, technology magazines, Web sites and online discussion boards and newsgroups. A supplement to ¡§Tools and technologies¡¨ is Appendix C, ¡§Vendors,¡¨ which is an overview of products, features and vendors. Appendix D, ¡§Tools Checklist,¡¨ which lists sample questions to ask a vendor. When you have narrowed your list of potential vendors, Rockley suggests that you either contact the vendors and request onsite demonstrations or send vendors an RFP (request for proposal). ¡§Tools and technologies¡¨ covers XML because it provides interoperability between applications. XML is not a set of tags that you apply to documents; it is a specification that sets rules for the creation of tag sets that you apply to documents. For instance, if you selected tools first and then designed your content, you might find that some of the content does not behave the way you expect it to. One solution would be to use XSLT to transform the content and move it around where you want it. While this may be an acceptable solution, it¡¦s not. The conversion costs time, money, and resources. There is no need to convert or transform content if it¡¦s modelled in XML from the start. Rockley describes strategies for collaborative authoring, how to separate content from format, how to manage change and transition. An example is given to illustrate how the same product description is reused effectively to create a show catalog, brochure, press release and Web site. It¡¦s easy to understand that people find it hard to believe that content somebody else created could possibly meet their needs. After all, Rockley notes, it was written for a different purpose and media, and the author could not have known their customers/audience/requirements. However, if content is written for a different purpose, audience, or media without considering how the content can be reused, it¡¦ won¡¦t work. Don¡¦t be optimistic that everybody will be willing to convert to a better way of authoring and managing content. Rockley presents issues to consider when planning your change management strategy such as overcoming resistance from opponents and descriptions of new and modified roles. She recommends creating a role for an enterprise project coordinator and information technologist; a change to existing roles business owners or analysts and information architects; and new skill sets (p. 413-415). Unintentionally overlooked are system administrators to maintain the content management system and to ensure that users adhere to standards. Don¡¦t be overly optimistic that everybody will want morph into new roles and change their authoring habits. An XML system is best suited and ideal for a large documentation department for all content authoring or an organization where every author uses the XML authoring tool. A team of ten or fewer will be constrained to balance XML implementation and documentation project duties, and learn how to use the (new) content management system. Even if you assign the complex task of XML implementation and creation of information models, workflows and DTDs to a consultant, the consultant will require guidance from the team. These are only a few of the constraints to overcome to assure a successful unified content strategy that Rockley expertly describes how to overcome. Managing Enterprise Content concludes with a checklist for implementing a unified content strategy, suggestions for writing for multiple media, sample questions to ask vendors, a checklist for the tools required to implement a unified content strategy, and the importance of content relationships in version control. Pay close attention to usability. The rollout of a content management system, authoring tools, and authoring standards affects every member of the organization. If it¡¦s not easy to learn, easy to use, easy to support, and easy to maintain, authors will revert to the traditional way of writing and managing content. Read Managing Enterprise Content before you invest in a content management system and consulting fees. You will be an educated and informed customer and user when you begin shopping for a content management solution of your own.
Rating:
Summary: Review of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Str
Review: Are you overwhelmed with the need to create more content, faster, customized for more customers, and for more media than ever before? Do you consider storing documentation on a server as an effective a content management system? Do you want to learn how content management will empower your organization? The answer to these questions and many more is covered in Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann Rockley with Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning of The Rockley Group. The Rockley Group is one of the leading providers of content management methodologies. Managing Enterprise Content provides concepts, strategies, guidelines, processes, and technical options that will prepare you to meet the increasing demands of creating, managing, and distributing content. It describes techniques that will help you define your content management requirements, build your vision, design your content architecture, select tools, and overcome obstacles of managing enterprise content. It will help you to visualize the spectrum of enterprise content, the requirements for effectively creating, managing, and delivering content, and the value of developing a content strategy for your organization. That¡¦s a lot of information for one person to understand. That¡¦s why the book is written for three audiences: content managers, information architects, and authors. Managing Enterprise Content follows the same methodical approach that Rockley uses to teach content management in seminars and workshops. I was expecting the book to jump into the technologies to implement a content management system. But that¡¦s not how Rockley presents content management. She begins with The basis of a unified content strategy and describes how content is created, who creates it, why authors work in isolation, and the consequences of isolation and centralizing content. The solution is to consolidate content in a definitive source, and a process that encourage authors to work collaboratively. The next step is to assess opportunities for content reuse. If you have never heard the term ¡¥reusing content,¡¦ you may know it as single sourcing. You probably already reuse content (i.e. copy and paste), which works well until the information, and everywhere that it appears, must be updated. Content reuse involves using existing content components (e.g. paragraphs, sections, and chapters) to develop new documents. Implementing a unified content strategy is a costly investment: tools, technologies, and training are not cheap. Investment costs are incurred in technology, training and consulting, and lost productivity. Examples are given to calculate the cost of authoring tools, content management systems, training and consulting¡Xa content management system is not a plug and play, one size fits all solution. The return on investment is achieved by reduced time to market, reduced cost of product content development, improved accuracy and quality of content, and reduced manufacturing defects. The examples are especially helpful because you will need to create a proposal to convince budget holders and management on the return on investment of a content management solution. Are you ready to buy a content management system? Not yet, read further. ¡§Performing a substantive audit: Determining business requirements¡¨ begins with an introduction on how to determine goals that you want a unified content strategy to solve, for example:
„h Reduce the time to plan, write, review, approve, and publish
„h Create flexible content that is easily reused to create information products for multiple products and multiple media
„h Reduce the cost of translation by reusing existing translations.
„h Make content more accessible; separating content from format makes it possible for content to be displayed automatically in a format appropriate to the disability.
Rockley describes how to identify opportunities where a unified approach of content management (i.e. planning, design, authoring and revision, version control, access control, publication and delivery to its audiences) is beneficial. You are probably wondering how this all fits together, and Rockley explains how. ¡§Design¡¨ describes information modeling and metadata, how to personalize content, how to design a workflow, and how to implement your design. An information model is critical for a unified content strategy because it provides a framework for documentation. It's the 80/20 rule: 80% of your effort is planning and analysis, and 20% of your effort is implementing the solution with whatever tools are selected to accomplish the goals the organization has set for itself. The level of detail of your information model depends on the level of reuse you want to achieve. Many desktop publishing tools can dynamically publish personalized letters and forms by matching elements such as names and address¡Xa content management system can do the same. I was confused why design is given so much attention. Why not conduct the audit, buy the tools, and worry about design later? You can¡¦t. The design of information, reuse models/maps, meta data and workflow are all tool independent tasks. Regardless of the tools selected, you must first analyse and then design a content or information model so that it can be presented to IT staff and software vendors. Doing this in advance makes it possible for you to ask vendors to respond to a request for proposal and document how their tools can help you satisfy your specific challenges. Analysis provides an opportunity to collect metrics. From your information models, you can identify how much of your content could be reusable and where. Educated on how content is used, where and how, you are better prepared to match the tools and technology to the origination¡¦s goals to deliver a unified content management solution. ¡§Tools and technologies¡¨ offers guidelines for evaluating tools. With so many tools and technologies to choose from, selecting the one that best satisfies your goals and budget is a challenge. Your best advantage is to be an educated consumer before you shop around. Rockley recommends that you identify your needs, and criteria for evaluating product options in terms of usability, training provided, supporting documentation provided, technical support, upgrades and enhancements, implementation time, cost, vendor viability, partnerships the vendor has to provide an expanded solution, and references. Where do you being looking? Some good sources are conferences where vendors present authoring solutions such as the annual STC conference, electronic mailing lists, technology magazines, Web sites and online discussion boards and newsgroups. A supplement to ¡§Tools and technologies¡¨ is Appendix C, ¡§Vendors,¡¨ which is an overview of products, features and vendors. Appendix D, ¡§Tools Checklist,¡¨ which lists sample questions to ask a vendor. When you have narrowed your list of potential vendors, Rockley suggests that you either contact the vendors and request onsite demonstrations or send vendors an RFP (request for proposal). ¡§Tools and technologies¡¨ covers XML because it provides interoperability between applications. XML is not a set of tags that you apply to documents; it is a specification that sets rules for the creation of tag sets that you apply to documents. For instance, if you selected tools first and then designed your content, you might find that some of the content does not behave the way you expect it to. One solution would be to use XSLT to transform the content and move it around where you want it. While this may be an acceptable solution, it¡¦s not. The conversion costs time, money, and resources. There is no need to convert or transform content if it¡¦s modelled in XML from the start. Rockley describes strategies for collaborative authoring, how to separate content from format, how to manage change and transition. An example is given to illustrate how the same product description is reused effectively to create a show catalog, brochure, press release and Web site. It¡¦s easy to understand that people find it hard to believe that content somebody else created could possibly meet their needs. After all, Rockley notes, it was written for a different purpose and media, and the author could not have known their customers/audience/requirements. However, if content is written for a different purpose, audience, or media without considering how the content can be reused, it¡¦ won¡¦t work. Don¡¦t be optimistic that everybody will be willing to convert to a better way of authoring and managing content. Rockley presents issues to consider when planning your change management strategy such as overcoming resistance from opponents and descriptions of new and modified roles. She recommends creating a role for an enterprise project coordinator and information technologist; a change to existing roles business owners or analysts and information architects; and new skill sets (p. 413-415). Unintentionally overlooked are system administrators to maintain the content management system and to ensure that users adhere to standards. Don¡¦t be overly optimistic that everybody will want morph into new roles and change their authoring habits. An XML system is best suited and ideal for a large documentation department for all content authoring or an organization where every author uses the XML authoring tool. A team of ten or fewer will be constrained to balance XML implementation and documentation project duties, and learn how to use the (new) content management system. Even if you assign the complex task of XML implementation and creation of information models, workflows and DTDs to a consultant, the consultant will require guidance from the team. These are only a few of the constraints to overcome to assure a successful unified content strategy that Rockley expertly describes how to overcome. Managing Enterprise Content concludes with a checklist for implementing a unified content strategy, suggestions for writing for multiple media, sample questions to ask vendors, a checklist for the tools required to implement a unified content strategy, and the importance of content relationships in version control. Pay close attention to usability. The rollout of a content management system, authoring tools, and authoring standards affects every member of the organization. If it¡¦s not easy to learn, easy to use, easy to support, and easy to maintain, authors will revert to the traditional way of writing and managing content. Read Managing Enterprise Content before you invest in a content management system and consulting fees. You will be an educated and informed customer and user when you begin shopping for a content management solution of your own.
Rating:
Summary: ECM Soup to Nuts
Review: Content Management - ask ten organizations what that term means and you will get ten different answers. Attempting to research, design, and implement a CM system is a daunting task. Ann Rockley's book not only brings a common understanding of what content management entails, but provides a easy to follow roadmap on how to implement CM within your organization. Discussions of purpose, roles, tools, processes, and benefits - it's all here in this book. For those new to Content Management, this book provides a soup to nuts approach that exposes the pitfalls and areas of resistance you may encounter in the process of getting buy-in for management. It then guides you through every aspect one needs to consider in achieving a successful implementation within an organization. For organizations already well along the way in implementing a CMS, this book will either validate what you have already discovered or expose issues you may have missed that still need addressing to increase the effectiveness of your implementation.
Rating:
Summary: The Standard for Implementing Content Management
Review: I just completed teaching a course on single sourcing and content management at Richland Community College in Dallas, Texas. I used this book as the text. Ms. Rockley, a recognized expert in the field of content management and technical communication, has broken the implementation process down into very logical activities. She includes excellent examples and case studies to illustrate each step of the process. Her discussion on calculating the return on investment is straight forward and comprehensive. She doesn't pull any punches on the realities of implementing a content management solution. There are no short cuts. She emphasizes the planning that MUST be done and explains every aspect you need to consider.
My entire class agreed that this book is destined to become the industry standard for implementing content management.
Thanks, Ann, for spending the time to write this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Misleading title...really unifed content creation
Review: I was disappointed that the book was really focused on how to create reusable elements that go into product information such as data sheets, marketing collateral, technical support, etc. It focused on auditing the content, finding the reusability elements across departments, then designing an appropriate hierarchy on top of a content management system. It assumed that content drives the information architecture when in most applications it is the business processes that drive the architecture. It ignored the majority of enterprise content like email, word docs, design specs, forms, etc. that make up the real information content of the enterprise. If you are someone who creates lots of documentation deliverables in paper, electronic and web formats and need to get costs under control, this is probably a good book. If you are considering a Content Management System to better manage a number of business processes and all the documents that make them go, this is a poor choice for those efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Misleading title...really unifed content creation
Review: I was disappointed that the book was really focused on how to create reusable elements that go into product information such as data sheets, marketing collateral, technical support, etc. It focused on auditing the content, finding the reusability elements across departments, then designing an appropriate hierarchy on top of a content management system. It assumed that content drives the information architecture when in most applications it is the business processes that drive the architecture. It ignored the majority of enterprise content like email, word docs, design specs, forms, etc. that make up the real information content of the enterprise. If you are someone who creates lots of documentation deliverables in paper, electronic and web formats and need to get costs under control, this is probably a good book. If you are considering a Content Management System to better manage a number of business processes and all the documents that make them go, this is a poor choice for those efforts.
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