This post is syndicated from: CMS Watch Recent Blog Entries.
At this week's J Boye conference in Philadelphia, I joined a panel reviewing some of the "hot topics" from the event. As you might expect at a gathering of web and intranet managers, the issue of governance kept recurring.
We could debate what governance means -- I define it as consistent structures and processes for making effective decisions -- but everyone agrees governance is critical to long-term success.
I don't claim to be an expert on website and IT governance, but after a couple decades of helping people make technology decisions, I'll boil down my thoughts on the topic to one simile:
Governance is like sex.
- People tend to talk about it more than they do it, and...
- ...Most people don't do it as much as they'd like
- At least one key player needs to really want it or it will never get started
- There are many different ways to do it satisfactorily
- It's more art than science
- It's more successful in environments characterized by mutual trust
- Other people can give you a lot of good advice, but only you can make it happen
- You may not get it right at first, but that shouldn't stop you from trying
- A shared sense of fairness encourages repeatability
- In the end, bad governance is better than no governance at all
So hopefully at least by now you're smiling. If you have any particular (but not X-rated!) governance success stories you'd like to share, please chime in via the comments below.
(P.S.: I'll be touching a little bit more on web governance in my May 11 webinar, "How Do You Know If It's Time for a New Web CMS?")
