A developer’s role in content modelling
From Content Modelling: A Master Skill:
On Developers:
Developers will need a greater level of detail in the content model. If the content strategist doesn’t provide them, the developers will interpret content needs and make up the details themselves. And they may not be in a position to keep in mind all the design requirements, as well as the needs of the content producers who will use the system.
On Content Authors and CMS Users:
It’s important to keep this audience in mind because they’ll be the ones working with the CMS each day. For their sake, try to keep the model intuitive, be consistent where there are similarities, and keep redundant activities to a minimum. Depending on how you set up the content model, you can make it easy for them to get their work done, or you can make them dread having to use the system.
Doing CMS development and design I’ve already learned some of these lessons the hard way. There’s much more to be done than just following a spec (much of it written based on assumptions or incomplete information).