Workflow. CMS buyers put it first on their list of mandatory product features. Vendors love to show it off during product demos. Project sponsors evangelize the coming good. Vice Presidents await the payoff.

It seems so simple. Write. Edit. Approve. Publish. And yet, in my experience, and I suspect many others’, many a Vice President are still awaiting the promised payoff.

Workflow rules seem so simple at the start, but a few conversations with users (or a few years of watching users struggle with workflow) reveal that content management is messy. Perhaps your situation is different (I’ve heard that before). I don’t know of any hard and fast rules that make workflow this way, but here are some situations to illustrate my point:

1. Marketing wants to make some product claims on the website. Legal is concerned about… well… the legal ramifications. Now what? In the human realm: a phone call, subtle human negotiations, mutually agreeable content changes, published content (ok - it’s not always this easy, but an avenue for discussion and negotiation is open). In the workflow realm: an email to Legal, stating that content is awaiting approval, gets read with no human context. Next - perhaps assumptions about the ‘damn marketing department that thinks they can say whatever they want to say’ followed by a denial message stating that ‘we can’t say this on our website, we’re exposing ourselves to too much risk.’ Perhaps the message includes recommended changes - from Legal’s point of view only. This is followed by Marketing once again knowing that ‘legal just doesn’t understand the challenges of competing in this market.’ Stalled content. Nobody is happy. (ok - it’s not always this bad, but think of this - have you ever received an email and misinterpreted the mood or tone of the sender?)
2. Your site is bilingual. You need the content on your site ASAP. You’ve outsourced your translation services. Should your workflow allow the English content (or other primary language…) to be published while the translation is done? If so, how long will your site remain out of synch?
3. You are an author. Your boss must approve your content. You are friends with your boss’s boss. You already know that your content is going to get approved, but your boss doesn’t. hmm.

So, how do you make workflow work? My advice:

1. Determine if workflow is essential to launching your project. Really. Could you run your content managed site for a few months without workflow? If so, do it. Here’s why:
1. By deferring workflow to a future phase, your project will launch sooner - you won’t spend days (weeks…) analyzing your workflow needs. And you won’t spend days (weeks…) implementing non-core functionality. Instead, you can begin developing the core components of the solution.
2. A few months of site usage will reveal your true workflow needs. Why spend time trying to dream up what will really be needed? Launch your project, use the system, and you’ll soon learn where workflow is or isn’t needed. In my experience, this need has been the same for almost every project: nil. Analysis and programming would have been wasted money and effort. But even in cases where workflow is beneficial, a few months of system usage will greatly improve the accuracy of your needs analysis.
3. Allow your users time to learn the CMS. In the beginning, workflow will be a barrier (”did it publish?” “Hey John, did you just get a notification from the CMS, because I think I submitted a page…”), even if a future implementation actually smoothes the process. Once your users are competent and unintimidated, then you can think about workflow, as well as other new features.
2. Don’t confuse workflow with authoring permissions. It’s entirely possible to set up roles such that users have full access to author/edit/publish in some sections of a website while having no rights in other sections.
1. I recommend that you implement authoring permissions during your first phase launch. You don’t want your HR staff mistakenly posting a press release when they really just want to edit a job description.
3. Recognize the messiness of workflow and human behaviour. Don’t oversimplify your workflow. If you’re going to build it, build it right - otherwise it will just get turned off. (Or worse, become a reason to call the CMS project a failure.)

I do recognize that workflow is absolutely necessary in some situations. Perhaps you have franchisees writing content for a corporate site. Perhaps your content team is dispersed across multiple time zones. Perhaps your industry is highly regulated and you must be able to prove to an auditor that a specific article of content was undeniably approved by a VP on a particular date and time. If this is you, I wish you good luck. If not, in my experience, I think it pays to wait a few months for workflow.