My two-year-old son is pleased to live in a house made of bricks. It affords him protection from the Big Bad Wolf.

But what the books don’t tell you is that while piglets 1 and 2 were sheltered by their less than robust housing, piglet 3 faced rocketing costs, toil, tears and the emergent threat of swine flu.

In the seldom-told sequel, pigs 1 and 2 are forced to vacate the house that was designed for one small piglet rather than three growing hogs. They lack the skill and resources to build their own brick houses and end up destitute and living in fear of Tom the piper’s son.

As an architect, piglet 3’s end vision is certainly the right one — or would be if he foresees having to accommodate his two brothers. But in order to fulfil that vision you need the skills, resources and time.

If you’ve an immediate problem finding the right shelter for your content, then long-term strategic planning for a robust future vision is likely to be the wrong approach. You need to find a quick way to protect your resources, assess the situation then plan your next step. You’re unlikely to face a fatal threat – it’ll just be lupine bluster – and even less likely to have enough time and money to mitigate against the problem anyway. Start building, see if it works and, if it doesn’t, tear it down again. Being able to manage even a small amount of your content in a robust way is better than just having a visionary strategy.

Those three tips:

1. Choose two high-value objectives; one that should be simple to achieve and the other likely to be complicated.
2. Select a technology to deliver these objectives that is in your existing skill set and technology stack. Only buy licences required to meet the project objectives.
3. Implement the project as quickly as possible and evaluate the success or otherwise six months later.

ECM doesn’t have to be a swine to implement. As long as you don’t try to go the whole hog from the start you’ll avoid making a pig’s ear of the project and be sure to bring home the bacon. It’s a ham-fisted analogy, but it’s no fairy tale.

Further reading on the failings of web strategy:

1. Anthony Bradley – Your Web Site Strategy is Destined to Fail
2. Dennis D. McDonald – How to avoid common strategic planning mistakes
3. Maish Nichani – Mapping your website redesign strategy
4. Gerry McGovern – Web redesign is bad strategy