Hi James, my first question goes to the scope of the tender that might be requiring this level of detail.
I would also like to better understand how the "information model details" requirement differs from functional requirements that the tender might already address. If however, the client is asking to include in the tender the design and development of this "information model" for his organisation, I would see that as potentially being enormous task, with associated size related risks. In the various related roles I have been in, these items have been dealt with in discrete but related exercises. Even when going to a consulting firm to arrange such a full compliment of related work, the chances are that they will break the task into several discrete components. If on the other hand your client is just seeking to describe the current state or the proposed design state (i.e. all the information model design work has already been done), my toughts would be to include succint descriptions of the various subject items, with a view to providing relevant details through presentations to the market and fine detail to follow as part of the contract negotiation. All said and done though, I am not aware of any 'best' practice, only those things that have worked for me or that I have seen work for others. regards Tony Kisbey (no affiliations with anyone or anything although I have been independently involved with the use of the Step Two CM Requirements Toolkit and would recommend it as a great time saver) --__--__-- Message: 3 Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 08:49:59 +1100 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: James Robertson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [cms-list] Best practices for specifying information models? Hi all, I was talking with a client yesterday who is starting out on a big project to select a big CMS. Now, he is looking at the best way of specifying "information model" details, to be included in the CMS tender. By information model, he is referring to details such as: * Information architecture (site design, etc) * Metadata requirements * Content types * Workflows * Enterprise information repositories * Single-source publishing and content reuse requirements * User information (identities, security, etc) The idea is to provide vendors with sufficient information to understand what the specific business requirements are. The challenge is to collate and present this in some sort of meaningful way. I had to confess to this customer that I had not seen much in the way of "best practice" in this area. Does anyone have some thoughts/examples/ best practice ideas about how to best specify this information, and how much should be covered? Thanks in advance, James ------------------------- James Robertson Step Two Designs Pty Ltd Knowledge Management Consultancy, SGML & XML Content Management Requirements Toolkit 112 CMS requirements, ready to cut-and-paste http://www.steptwo.com.au/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] --__--__-- **************************************************************** NOTICE - This message is intended only for the use of the addressee named above and may contain privileged and confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you are hereby notified that you must not disseminate, copy or take any action based upon it. If you received this message in error please notify HIC immediately. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of HIC. **************************************************************** -- http://cms-list.org/ more signal, less noise.
