Deane Barker, Chief Strategy Officer at Blend Interactive spoke at eZ Conference 2017 on Why Content Projects Fail. Deane discussed 5 reasons for why content projects fail, and what we can do to prevent it. From the case study syndrome to development myopia and more, Deane highlights the areas of failure for content projects. And then goes over practical ways to overcome these failure to achieve success.

1. Why Content Projects Fail
…and what we can do about it.

6. @gadgetopia

9. Content projects fail.

10. Five reasons why they fail.
Five things we might do to prevent it.

11. Spoiler:
None of these problems are technical

12. How Projects Fail
• Abortive
Fails to launch
• Quantitative
Fails to make project numbers
• ROI / Goals
Doesn’t bring about desired change
• Expectations
“It just doesn’t feel like I thought it would.”

13. Disclaimer
This is not meant to be accusatory.

14. #1
Case Study Syndrome

15. You know what you’re doing.
You have a very limited and slanted view
of what other people are actually doing.

16. Case Study Syndrome
• “I read this in a case study, so clearly everyone is doing
it.”
• People don’t produce case studies about things that
didn’t happen.
• Form of Survivor Bias.

17. No one writes case studies about the 99%
of companies that aren’t doing anything
interesting.

19. “The Law of Narrative Gravity posits that the
public and press are drawn to narratives, and the
more widely accepted a narrative, the more it
attracts and shapes the perception of facts.”
− Aaron Zamost for BackChannel

22. Case Study Syndrome is the sum total of
all the things you’re convinced you should
be doing.

23. Not right for your organization.
Not enough staff.
Not the right skills.
Not your most pressing problem.

24. Case Study Syndrome steals attention
away from more critical problems that you
can actually solve.

25. #2
Development Myopia

27. Building a New Home
• Deciding to move
• Developing floor plans
• Buying a lot
• Budgeting for construction
• Apply for financing
• Preparing to move
• Actually moving
• Redecorating
• Buying new stuff
• Learning how to use new stuff
• Planning new services
• Planning new commute
• Changing vehicles
• Changing schools
• Sending address changes
• Throwing a house-warming party
Transitioning to a New Home

28. We tend to focus on what we think is (1)
novel or (2) risky.

29. Training / Re training
Migration
Internal Marketing / Reporting
Governance
Infrastructure

30. Tool
Productization
Sales and Marketing
Ecosystem
Multi-User
Scaling

31. Far more projects have failed over non-
development issues than vice-versa.

32. #3
Control Fixation

33. We often want effort put into things that
don’t provide much measurable value but
make us think we’re in “control.”

35. “I love it when a plan comes together.”
− John “Hannibal” Smith

36. Control Fixations
• Workflow
• Dashboards
• Multi-site management
• Exhaustive content management
• Form building
• Pseudo-application development

38. “Return on Management”

39. More effort has been wasted chasing
control more than almost any other aspect
of a website project.

40. #4
Deus Ex Machina

43. The Truth
• There’s a good chance significant parts of our problem originated
external to technology
• We tend not to look to people, governance, or process, because
these things exist now
• If problems could been fixed without new technology…why
weren’t they?
• It’s easy to say, “things will be better when we have new
technology because we’ll have something we don’t have now.”

45. Software is one aspect of a content
environment, and it’s rarely the most
important one.

46. #5
Big Bang Syndrome

50. Things that leave on Day 2…
• Your budget
• Your staff
• Your contractors
• The attention of the C-level
• Any sense of urgency
• Your enthusiasm
• Your job?

51. Many projects never make the leap from
project to program.
In reality, the only time a website is “done”
is when it’s permanently removed from the
Internet.

52. Launch day is not the finish line.
It’s the starting line.

53. 1. Case Study Syndrome
2. Development Myopia
3. Control Fixation
4. Deus Ex Machina
5. Big Bang Syndrome

54. OMG, this is depressing.

56. Five Things We Can Do

57. #1
Put First Things First

58. Stop trying to solve Problem B before
you’ve solved Problem A.

59. Questions to Ask:
Content Strategy
• Do you know who your audiences are?
• Do you know what they want from your organization?
• Not your website; your organization
• Do you know how they try to get it from your website?
• Do you have content to fill those needs?

60. People Need Behavior Content

61. Questions to Ask:
Content Management
• Can your editors publish a page of content according to
their own standards of quality?
• Can your editors aggregate content according to their
own needs?
• Can they collaborate as a team to their level of
satisfaction?
• Can they do this without unreasonable frustration?

62. Questions to Ask:
Governance and Stakeholders
• Who is your ultimate stakeholder?
• What is their model of success?
• Are they comparing this project to others?
• (Spoiler: yes)
• Which projects, and what about those projects makes
them a model of success?

63. “Six months after this project launches,
what needs to happen for us to think that it
was all worth it?”

64. We’re so determined to be amazing that we
don’t stop to check that we’re any good.

66. #2
Plan from True Beginning to
True Ending

67. Do not fixate on development.

68. Build Web Site
Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 5 Task 6 Task 7 Task 8 Task 9

69. Non-Implementation Tasks
• Governance planning
• Training / Retraining
• Internal Marketing
• Post-Occupancy Evaluations
• Content Migration / Operations
• Load testing
• Documentation
• QA and Rework
• Political / Organizational Disputes
• Post-Launch Revisions
• Staff Turnover / Continuity
• Editorial Optimization

70. Pretend that the actual build is guaranteed.
What else do you have to do?

71. Start: “Hey, maybe we should do
something about the website…”
(time passes…)
Start: Development Begins
End: Website Launches
(time passes…)
End: “Hey, aren’t you glad we did
something about the website?”

72. #3
Keep Rough Edges in Context

73. Vendors and integrators are in an arms race
of promises, fueled by irrational belief
from customers.

74. “One-Stop Shop”
“Integrated”
“Seamless”
“Unified Platform”
“Perfect”

75. Perfect is the enemy of good
“Return on Management” is a perfectly
valid decision factor.

76. Factors to Determine ROM
• Frequency of the situation addressed
• How often does it occur?
• Lead time of the situation addressed
• How far will we be able to see it coming?
• Post-launch proximity to the people who can affect the
situation.
• How big of a deal is it to change manually?

77. Have honest, direct conversations about
budget/polish trade-off.

78. Cutting corners is sometimes a perfectly
acceptable practice.

79. #4
Don’t Confuse Means and Ends

80. Technology is a means, not an end.

81. It’s perfectly reasonable to source content
and functionality from outside the CMS.

83. Spend your money on things that matter.

84. #5
Set the Stage for Incremental
Improvement

85. This is a process, not a moment.

86. The Sad Truth: Some things just won’t
work…
• It won’t fit your content/marketing model
• You won’t be able to staff it
• Existing staff will turnover
• A “feature champion” might leave
• Your plans will change over time
• It may have just been a bad idea

87. You need to indoctrinate your organization
to the current website as one stage in an
evolution.
If you don’t like something, just wait a
minute…

89. “We’re programmers. Programmers are, in their
hearts, architects, and the first thing they want to
do when they get to a site is to bulldoze the place
flat and build something grand. We’re not
excited by incremental renovation: tinkering,
improving, planting flower beds.”
− Joel Spolsky

91. “I was drawn to medicine by the aura of
heroism—by the chance to charge in and solve a
dangerous problem.”
− Atul Gawande

92. “Success is not about the episodic, momentary
victories. It is about the longer view of
incremental steps that produce sustained
progress.”
− Atul Gawande

94. Incrementalism is where innovation
happens.

95. Fixed Mindset
vs.
Growth Mindset

96. 1. Put first things first
2. Plan from true beginning to true ending
3. Keep rough edges in context
4. Don’t confuse means and ends
5. Set the stage for incremental improvement

97. Why do content projects fail?

98. It’s not due to a lack of
technical heroism.
It’s due to an abundance of
posturing.

99. All sides of the
customer, vendor, integrator
triad are guilty of posturing.

100. Realism
Honesty
Advocacy

101. deane@blendinteractive.com
@gadgetopia
http://gadgetopia.com/