Give Them Some Credit
By Dale Dougherty
There's one group of people working on Web sites who seldom get the credit they deserve. They have a variety of titles, but they're generalists, not specialists.
These folks are called "production editors" or "production staff" in some companies. In other places, they're just called lowly assistants. Some see themselves as "producers," having borrowed that term from television production. They work behind the scenes to hold together a Web site because they manage a production process.
I've seen the production role expanded considerably over the years. Initially, it was a junior position. For instance, a writer might submit an article to a production editor who would add the HTML tags. The production staff also might work with designers to implement new designs or integrate graphic elements on a page. As the Web site grew, the production staff, headed by a production manager, took greater control of the day-to-day operations as well as special projects, integrating the work of designers, programmers, administrators, and editors.
Today, any reasonably professional Web site has begun to automate its operations to keep up with increasing demands. A common mistake is to replace relatively inexpensive production staff with harder-to-find programmers. The right kind of automation allows the production staff to do more, performing tasks that might otherwise require a programmer, such as setting up a database.
The platform for automating a site's production process is a content management system. The make-versus-buy decision for a content management system is a tough one because the Web changes so quickly and the production process has to change with it.
