Technology as magic

Part of my job is helping UKIT develop a Drupal support infrastructure. To that end, I sometimes meet with Drupal developers on campus to help them with their projects. Last week I talked to a web developer (I will protect her identity) in a large unit here at UK.

She has very limited familiarity with CMS or with Drupal, very little time, and a list of duties so long it is hard not to entertain suicidal thoughts when looking at it. She is expected (single-handedly) to migrate their existing web presence into Drupal, and along the way to build a ton of new functionality - some of which will require the interaction with other systems on campus, which most likely means additional programming (in which she has zero experience). And as a little aside, her boss asked her to add functionality for both mobile phones and tablets.

This sounds like full-time jobs for at least three people with high end IT skills, and instead we are going to have part of the time of one regular employee. Why does anyone think this could work?

I think the most likely candidate is management's ignorance of the complexity of the problem. They see the switch from a web brochure model (=a bunch of static pages organized into a simple tree) to a CMS as something similar to selling a Ford and buying a Toyota; while in fact it is more like trying to give up a bicycle and getting a submarine to do the same work.

But even below that is the problem of technology in general and information technology in particular being offered as a magic solution. The late Steve Jobs is perhaps the finest example of spreading the myth - in fact, the original iPad advertising copy described it as a "magical device". He was so fond of pitching Apple software and hardware as fast and easy to use, that there is a whole video made of clippings from his keynotes over the years where he always concludes the demo of a feature with "Boom!" to show how a task that used to take forever is now super easy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8L39UwOS-Y

This approach is not new - as early as 1888 George Eastman famously claimed to be doing the rest if you just press the button. But it is ubiquitous and because of that very harmful to the professionals working in the field.

It is no surprise that modern CEOs and administrators think that switching to a CMS involves pushing a button (and BOOM! - it is done). That means that as you work on these projects, you want to be very clear up front with your clients about the complexity of the task. You have to educate them about the time and resources that it takes to create complex systems like CMS. The best project may fail if you don't educate the client and set the expectations right.