Content Management

Definition

Content Management

the activity consisting of the cohesive collection of all tasks that are primarily performed to manage the content (i.e., published data components) of one or more related systems or applications throughout the content’s lifecycle

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Content Management is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Abstract
• Superclass: Digital Asset Management
• Subclasses:
  • Managing the content of a business’s online catalog of products and services as well as customer information for an eCommerce website.
  • Managing the current information on a news or informational website.
  • Managing the content (e.g., music and videos) of an entertainment website (e.g., an online radio website).
  • Managing the employee (e.g., personal information, salary, and benefits) information for a business’s internal website.

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of Content Management are to:

• Deliver Content.
  
  • Deliver the right content to the right users in a timely, scalable, and cost-effective manner.
  • Deliver the content via multiple appropriate channels including the Web, wireless, print, etc.
• Maximize Content Value.
  Maximize the value and usefulness of a business enterprise’s content to its different audiences (e.g., different types of users).
• Increase Content Quality.
  Increase the quality of the publised content by ensuring that it is:
  • Accurate.
  • Authorized.
  • Current.
  • Consistent.
  • Easy for its users to find and retrieve.
  • Reusable from one system/application to another.
  • Personalized to its different users and audiences.
  • Targeted to its different uses.
  • The correct version to be published.
  • Supportive of the digital brand of the business enterprise.
• Manage Content.
  Effectively manage the content throughout its entire life cycle from creation, acquisition, or migration to publication and retirement.
• Minimize Risks.
  Minimize risks due to the publication of inaccurate, unauthorized, obsolete, or inconsistent content (e.g., publication of the wrong version of some content).
• Order and design appropriate new content.
• Either create or obtain this draft content through either acquisition or migration.
• Enter the content and its associated metadata into a content management system.
• Internationalize the content.
• Edit the content for style, consistency, grammer, spelling, readability, etc.
• Approve, publish, and personalize the edited content.
• Access (e.g., browse, search, request notification of) the published content.
• Retire (e.g., archive or delete) the obsolete content.

Preconditions

Depending on the type of content to be managed, content management may typically begin when the following preconditions hold:

• Initial Prototype Content:
  • The construction phase has started.
  • The initial conventions for content management have been produced during the process engineering activity.
  • The content-related sections of the following documents are largely complete and are relatively stable:
    • System Requirements Specification
    • Domain Model Document
    • Information Architecture Document
    • Database Design Document
    • Human Interface Design Document
  • The initial content management team (supported by the user interface team) are adequately staffed and trained in:
    • Content management planning
    • Content design
    • Prototype content creation.
• Initial Real Content:
  • The delivery phase has started.
  • The production conventions for content management have been produced during the process engineering activity.
  • The content-related sections of the following documents are complete and have passed inspection:
    • System Requirements Specification
    • Domain Model Document
    • Information Architecture Document
    • Database Design Document
    • Human Interface Design Document
  • The content management team is adequately staffed and trained in most content management tasks.
  • The content management environment exists and has been tested.
• Production Content:
  • The usage phase has started.
  • The production conventions for content management have been produced during the process engineering activity.
  • The content-related sections of the following documents are complete and have been approved by the CustomerRepresentative:
    • System Requirements Specification
    • Domain Model Document
    • Information Architecture Document
    • Database Design Document
    • Human Interface Design Document
  • The content management team is adequately staffed and trained in all content management tasks.
  • The content management environment exists and has been approved by the Customer Representative.

Completion Criteria

Content management is typically complete when the following postconditions hold:

• The retirement phase has started.
• The application(s) has been retired from service:
  • The data component retirement task has retired the content and the following content management databases:
    • Content Archive
    • Content Cache
    • Content Personalization Database
    • Content Metadata Database
    • Draft Content Database
    • External Content Sources
    • Legacy Content Sources
    • Published Content Database
  • The software component retirement task has retired the content management system.
  • The hardware component retirement has retired the content management servers.

Tasks

The content management activity typically involves the following producers performing the following content management tasks in an iterative, incremental, parallel, and time-boxed manner:

• Content Management Team, which performs:
  • Content Management Planning
  • Content Ordering
  • Content Design
  • Content Creation
  • Content Acquisition
  • Content Entry
  • Content Migration
  • Content Internationalization
  • Content Editing
  • Content Approval
  • Content Publication
  • Content Personalization
  • Content Transformation
  • Content Caching
  • Content Access
  • Content Usage Analysis
  • Content Rights Management
  • Content Retirement

The following content management architecture diagram illustrates a typical content management activity in terms of its component tasks (ellipses), its associated roles (stick figures), database data components and externals (cylinders), and the dataflows and precidence relationships (arrows).

Environments

Content management is typically performed using the following environment(s) and associated tools:

• Engineering Environment (initial prototype content):
  • Content Management System
  • Configuration Management System
    (for configuration management of initial content management work products)
  • Documentation Tools
    (for content management planning and prototype content creation and content editing)
  • Multimedia Tools
    (for initial multimedia content creation)
• Content Management Environment (initial real content and production content):
  • Content Management System(s)
  • Database Management System(s)
  • Configuration Management System
    (for configuration management of content management work products)
  • Documentation Tools
    (for content management planning and real content creation and content editing)
  • Multimedia Tools
    (for multimedia content creation)

Work Products

The content management activity typically results in the production of all or part of the following work products:

• Diagrams:
  • Content Management Architecture Diagram
  • Data Design Diagram
• Documentation:
  • Content Management Plan
  • Content Management Analysis Report
• Data Components:
  • Content:
    • Textual content.
    • Numerical content.
    • Audio content.
    • Graphical content.
    • Video content.
  • Content Metadata
• Content Management Databases:
  • Content Archive
  • Content Cache
  • Content Metadata Database
  • Content Personalization Database
  • Draft Content Database
  • External Content Sources
  • Legacy Content Sources
  • Published Content Database

Phases

The content management activity tasks are typically performed during the following phases:

Guidelines

• Some endeavor-specific processes do not include the content management activity because some endeavors do not involve the creation and usage of significant content.
• Content management is typically a very large and important activity during the usage phase of any application development endeavor if the application has significant dynamic content that is published to its users.
• Content is often explicitly targeted for publication via the World Wide Web.
• Because of the overlap of this activity’s content design and content creation tasks and the data component design data component implementation activities respectively, care should be taken to avoid redundant tasks when creating an endeavor-specific process.
• The content access task differs from the other content management tasks because it involves using rather than managing the content. Thus, content access could just as well be considered a usage task. However, content access is included within content management because it makes content management more cohesive due to its strong relationship with content.
• The preconditions of this activity should be the union of the preconditions of its constituent tasks.
• The completion criteria for this activity should be the union of the postconditions of its constituent tasks.