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TeamSite is a tool, not a platform!

As much as Java developers might try to convince you, take it from me: TeamSite is not a platform, it is not a library, it is not a framework. TeamSite is a TOOL, just as MS Word is a tool, just as EverNote is a tool, just as Skype is a tool, just as your coffee machine is a tool.

A tool is a device that can be used to produce an item or achieve a task, but that is not consumed in the process. Informally the word is also used to describe a procedure or process with a specific purpose. (quote from WikiPedia)

A tool is conceived to achieve this task and therefore needs to be handled the way it was designed. If I would try to cut a piece of paper using a pair of scissors backwards, I would be cutting my hand.

Things aren’t going well for dear-old TeamSite. Ever since Interwoven was taken over by Autonomy, the focus of TeamSite became a little blurry. TeamSite seems to get implemented in order to keep teams (not to say heaps) of Java developers going, despite the fact they haven’t heard about web content management EVER. Basic principles of web content management are thrown out of the window at a blink, implementations don’t get designed around the ease-of-use for content owners but based on the following design patterns;

• we are Java developers so we only want to do Java
• we don’t know XSL and we therefore hate it
• we don’t have a clue what TeamSite looks like for a user and what the heck, we don’t know the user

Which ends up time and again in monstruous implementations which are not only impossible to use from an end user perspective (if they ever do get finished), but are also impossible to manage. Beware the day Autonomy comes up with an upgrade, oh my, I hope Autonomy hasn’t based a business plan on selling upgrades cause noones upgrading any time soon after such a customization party.

So what I am trying to say is;

• you need to know WCM in order to implement it
• you need to know TeamSite in order to implement it
• if you don’t like TeamSite’s architecture, get a different WCM, there’s plenty of options!