Web Site (Mis) Management: Are Things Getting Better?

By Dennis D. McDonald

Lisa Welchman in Why I’m Disgusted with Web Teams on The Gilbane Group Blog has a great rant about corporate web site mismanagement (or lack of management, basically the same thing). Here's a quote:

The Web needs to be managed and it needs to be managed by people who understand not just the Web but also business operations and product quality. Unfortunately, this is not a description of many of the plain old vanilla business school manager types we see in organizations. A lot of managers we work with have an aversion to any knowledge that might be construed as specialized.

Now,  Lisa's basic point is that web sites and their associated processes need to be managed and she decries the lack of qualified people doing so. Let's grant her that as well as her other point that technologists are sometimes lacking in business savvy. My question is, as opportunities for user involvement in creating content and developing relationships via technology are quickly evolving, will  a byproduct of this increased "techno-familiarity" be raised awareness of the need to do a better job of managing corporate web resources? Here's the comment I left on Lisa's post:

Of course, I would never argue AGAINST doing a better job of managing any important organizational resource, but I do think that one of the things that is causing major changes to the "tyranny of the web people" that you decry is the growing techno-literacy of middle management. For good or ill, more people are now involved in creating and publishing web content and as a result are asking questions like "why can't we do X?" when looking at the organization's static/unresponsive/constantly-out-of-date web site. Will this bump up the management attention for internet and intranet resources? We'll see.