Case study: Establishing a content platform
The success of our initial content management tooling project led to my team transitioning from a project team to a platform team to build out enterprise-wide content capabilities.
What was the problem?
Even with a new content management system (CMS) in use by numerous teams, that usage happened organically and content is still siloed within the CMS with each team building out their own set of capabilities for publishing websites, managing localization, and so on.
Who was involved?
CORE TEAM
Our core group operated under the “triad model” in which three different roles formed a leadership team.
Product manager
John Collins (content architect)
Engineering manager
How was the problem solved?
In all honesty, this work in still ongoing—in its infancy, even.
The team has developed the idea of “content primitives” to be core content types that are agnostic to how they are consumed, thus able to be consumed in a variety of experiences. This is based on thought leadership I’ve provided.
At the same time, the team knows that a lot of enterprise content isn’t as highly structured as these content primitives, so I’ve been working to create taxonomies and metadata that can be attached to unstructured content so that we can connect content across the enterprise.
I’ve created a domain model from my knowledge of the company and from talking to a variety of stakeholders from architects to product managers to content professionals in various teams.
What was the outcome of this project?
We managed to get funded as a platform team and spin our original project-specific work into a new team.
We created our first “content primitive” content type and it’s being consumed by one user experience currently with two others in development.
Competencies demonstrated
Strategic
planning
In reality, this idea of an enterprise-wide content platform has been our goal since we first looked at CMS providers. In a sense, this is the realization of years worth of preparation (with years worth of buildout to come).
We’ve driven toward strategic decisions that can impact the entire business and turn a cost center into an asset.
I’ve been the one who has driven much of the vision for this team.
High-impact communication
I’ve advocated for content as a strategic asset for years. Many of the messages I’ve shared with my triad form the nucleus of the business case we made and how the team is positioning itself today.
We’re communicating up to executives and sponsors and across to stakeholders across all parts of the business. This requires tailored communications for those audiences.
The team is using diagrams, videos, and text for much of this communication.
Continuous improvement
A lot of our team’s work is very theoretical, and we’ve repeatedly changed our “elevator pitch” and related comms to find examples, metaphors, and so on that connect with executives and stakeholders.
We’ve viewed our work as iterative, so we try to make decisions that keep us moving with a path to refining as we go.
We’ve made mistakes along the way and learned from them.
Applied
reasoning
There’s an inherent tension in the triad model, and that’s by design. There are times when we have to have hard discussions about tradeoffs between design, engineering, and the business. These discussions require applied reasoning.
Many of our stakeholders are happy with the status quo. We’ve been helping them understand that the status quo won’t enable the future that they need to deliver, and that our platform will.
Guiding team success
In many ways, I’ve been driving team’s vision.
While the team has had some turnover in the years since we started, I’ve been with the team for its entire history.
When needed, I’ve been very involved tactically to help drive the team to delivering value and reaching milestones.