Web Product Management: CMS vs. Website Product Management

Submitted by David Hobbs on 23 June 2010 - 8:51am

[View]

Product management is crucial for the success of a website. For the purposes of this blog post, let's say web product (as opposed to project or program) management is considering your web presence as a whole to ensure a high quality and consistent experience for the users. That said there are two aspects to product management for the web: product managing the CMS implementation and managing the website itself (for now let's not consider those aspects of your web presence outside the website(s) you directly control). I've written on both the platform (Internal Content Management System Product Management) and website (see The Web Product Manager: Quality via Product Management) side of product management, but is there really a difference between the two? I would say the main consideration is that both roles need to be covered. At some organizations, one person may be able to play both and other (usually larger) organizations would require both sides. Here are some of the responsibilities of both website product management and the product management of the CMS implementation:

Responsibility	Website Product Management	CMS Product Management

Overall consistency	Yes, of the site itself	Yes, of the implementation
Overall quality	Yes, of the site itself	Yes, of the implementation
Functionality	Quality from end user perspective, including not bloating the site	Quality from the technical perspective
Content	Overall content strategy, including training content contributors	Technology supports strategy and enforces standards as possible
Information Architecture	To ensure consistent implementation on site	Technology implemented to naturally enable official information architecture
Future-proofing	Watching trends to weave in new functionality	Implementing in a way that reasonably allows future functionality
Metrics	Web site metrics	Publishing and performance metrics
Users	Primarily web site users	Mostly CMS users, although web site user needs always take precedence

Both are needed for a successful large website, and need to be balanced. What happens if one of these is weak? Weak Website Product Management

Bloated and unfocused site
Inconsistent site (if no enforcement and training)
Unhappy external users

Weak CMS Product Management

Implementation effort higher than ideal
Instable implementation, and difficult to maintain or add functionality to
Inconsistent site (if tool not aligned with standards)
Unhappy internal users

Obviously, both are interrelated. For example, in an unfocused website product management environment, the implementation could become unstable just because unreasonable and incoherent requests are demanded and delivered. That said, consider both sides of product management for your website. Are you now sufficiently covering both aspects? Also see Lisa Welchman's definition of the web team including product management as well as Seth Gottlieb's Tips for Web Product Management.

------------------------- Need help product managing your website or CMS implementation? Contact David Hobbs Consulting.

Bookmark/Search this post with