Agile Business Change Blog Thoughts on Agile Strategic Business Change and Agile Delivery

Changing to a new website Content Management System (CMS) can be a daunting project, particularly as the move to a better CMS is likely to encourage all sorts of new exciting features.

The problem this can raise is that adding the CMS implementation to the new functionality comes to a large project, with all the potential for delays, etc.

So, how can this be best managed? Incrementally is the answer.

This is the approach taken by The Guardian when implementing their replacement news content system in a major project, with a team peaking at 100. They firstly implemented the core content system which was the equivalent of the existing system, went live with this replacement system, and then added the new features in further incremental releases (adopting an Agile approach).

A similar path (replacing the core content platform and then adding the new features) has been followed by a number of our other clients, but this isn't the only approach that can be taken. Another possibility is to implement the most important new features in the new CMS first, replacing the old CMS as a later phase. The decision will depend on a number of factors including the business value of the new features, whether the old CMS is adequate and whether significant changes are needed to the look and structure of the overall site.