Don't Boil The Ocean

Don't Boil The Ocean
An article by Rob Zimmelman, a senior digital asset management consultant for the Rookwood Group. This is the first in a series of best practice articles by the Rookwood Group.

You are ready to embark on a Media Asset Management (MAM) initiative and you want it to succeed. My first advice to you is "don't boil the ocean." What do I mean by "don't boil the ocean"? There is a tendency in MAM projects to try and solve all of the rich media needs of the extended organization out of the gate. Undertaken in this way, many a MAM project seems to be an overly complex, even impossible task, like "boiling the ocean."

You are ready to embark on a Media Asset Management (MAM) initiative and you want it to succeed. My first advice to you is "don't boil the ocean." What do I mean by "don't boil the ocean"? There is a tendency in MAM projects to try and solve all of the rich media needs of the extended organization out of the gate. Undertaken in this way, many a MAM project seems to be an overly complex, even impossible task, like "boiling the ocean."

Organizations that have been successful at implementing MAM have started with a discrete solution to a point problem, with an eye towards the greater whole. They learn from their experience, showcase their success and add capabilities and groups incrementally.

The "boil the ocean" approach gets started in organizations that don't understand MAM or in environments where consultants have made the problem much harder than it really needs to be. An example of a "boiling the ocean" approach is focusing on complex data models rather than simple business needs or defining technical requirements that might be great in an ideal world but are just not practical for someone with real world business problems. Another example is trying to digitize, catalog, and archive all of the media assets in the organization at the outset of the effort rather than taking incremental steps.

Instead of "boiling the ocean," focus on one or two discrete business problems, capturing and automating simple business workflows. The business problems should be clear and straightforward to solve. In either case the solution should benefit your organization in a visible and tangible way.

Consider this first step as a "pilot project." This pilot project should have real positive organizational impact and ROI. It's critical that you select a pilot project capable of being a resounding success. This will serve several purposes. It will illuminate the MAM landscape and the benefits of MAM for key decision-makers. It will serve to showcase your success and leverage your future efforts as you incrementally grow the effort to encompass more users and groups. It will also provide a safe MAM learning experience for your organization.

This is the first in a series of "best practice memos" that will continue and build on this and other key MAM themes. There are few one size fits all best practices and more than four paragraphs are generally required to document them. So what you will find here will be excerpts and synthesis from MAM best practices that have evolved over the years.