Role (simulated)
Product Manager: Platform & Enterprise
Goal
Eliminate the relay: cut downtime + free capacity
North Star
↓70% pages going offline per month
Admin ROI
~150hrs/year freed per organisation
Differentiated from
Better copy, more admins, email chains
Every org with a website has this problem.
Email chains, missed pages, admin as a relay.
Nobody solved it properly.
Email chains, missed pages, admin as a relay.
Nobody solved it properly.
The existing approach: notifications alerting a central admin, who manually identifies the owner, emails them, and waits: is structurally broken. It's not a content problem or a people problem. It's a system design problem. The CMS already has the data to solve it automatically. It just wasn't automated.
1
ICP & Competitive Landscape: Why Existing Solutions All Fail
Ideal Customer Profile
Organisations with 50+ content pages owned by multiple teams: local councils, NHS trusts, universities, government agencies. Content managed by subject matter experts, governed by a central digital admin. Compliance and audit trail required.
Why this ICP
Public sector orgs have (1) legal obligations to keep content accurate, (2) complex multi-team ownership that manual routing can't scale, and (3) procurement criteria that explicitly ask about content lifecycle governance. This feature wins contracts.
Competitive position
Task routing makes this CMS enterprise-grade. In competitive procurement, "automated content lifecycle management" is a differentiator. Organisations are explicitly asking for it. Building it first captures that signal before competitors do.
| Approach | Fixes root cause? | Notice window | Tracks completion? | Scales? | Admin effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current: email notification | ✗ No | ✗ 24hrs | ✗ None | ✗ Linear | ~3hrs/wk |
| Better notification copy | ✗ No | ✗ 24hrs | ✗ None | ✗ Linear | ~2.5hrs/wk |
| Hire more admins | ✗ No | ✗ 24hrs | ✗ None | ✗ Expensive | Costly |
| Manual calendar reminders | ~ Partial | ~ Maybe | ✗ None | ✗ Brittle | Setup cost |
| Task routing (this feature) | ✓ Yes | ✓ 7 days | ✓ Full audit | ✓ Automated | ~0 hrs/wk |
2
User Personas: Two Users, One Broken System
Alex, Content Admin
Central digital team: 1 per organisation
Goal
Keep all content live. Governance. Zero incidents.
Pain
~3hrs/week as a manual relay for work they don't own.
Motivation
Wants to be strategic. Instead forwards emails and chases responses.
Frustration
"I find out a page went offline when a citizen calls."
By the time they respond, the page has already gone offline. Then I have to chase again to fix it.
Sarah, Service Area Manager
Parking / Housing / Environment: 1 per service
Goal
Keep their service's content accurate and accessible.
Pain
Learns about expiry via admin email: often <24hrs left.
Motivation
Wants direct access and enough lead time to update thoughtfully.
Frustration
"We know our content. Why does an admin have to tell us?"
We don't know the page is expiring until the email. Then we're already in crisis mode.
3
Why This Problem First
Business impact
~150hrs/year of capacity freed at ~£35/hr equivalent = ~£5,250 measurable labour ROI. Plus ~4hrs reactive resolution cost per incident: avoidable with earlier routing.
Structural problem
The CMS already has the data to route tasks automatically. Page ownership is recorded, expiry dates are known. Not automating this is pure, preventable waste.
Market timing
Enterprise CMS procurement is asking for content lifecycle governance as a requirement. Building task routing now positions the platform to win contracts competitors without it will lose.
4
Problem Quantification
~150hrs
Admin time wasted per year on content routing. At ~£35/hr equivalent = ~£5,250 of preventable labour cost per organisation.
Based on ~3hrs/week estimate
24hrs
Current notice window: not enough for writing, reviewing, approving, and publishing content in a multi-stakeholder public sector environment. Real cycles need 5–7 days.
Confirmed by feature audit
~4hrs
Reactive resolution cost when a page goes offline: emergency content production + incident escalation. Proactive beats reactive 4× in time cost.
Estimated from incident research
5
Hypothesis
🧪
Core Hypothesis
If we convert content expiry events from passive notifications (no owner, no deadline) into structured tasks (auto-assigned, 7-day lead time, escalation on inaction): then content will be updated in time, pages will stay live, and admin routing labour will fall by ~40%.
The product reframe: A notification has no owner, no deadline, no definition of done: so the admin becomes the default owner. A task has an owner (auto-assigned from data that already exists in the CMS), a deadline (7 days), and a clear done state (content updated, task closed). Converting the event type from notification to task is the entire design insight. Everything else is implementation.
6
Current Flow vs Proposed Flow
Current: Notification Model (Broken)
⏰
CMS sends alert
"Page expires in 24hrs": no owner, no action
Only admin notified🧑💼
Admin identifies owner
Manual lookup every time
~20 min per page📧
Admin emails service area
Unstructured, deadline unclear
Response: hours to days⏳
Service area responds (maybe)
No tracking, no escalation
Often too late🔴
Page goes offline
Citizens see 404. ~4hrs to resolve.
Service failure + reactive costProposed: Task Routing (Fixed)
📋
CMS creates task automatically
7 days before expiry: owner, deadline, link
Auto-assigned from existing data📬
Dual notification
Task to service area. Admin sees dashboard only.
Admin routing: 0 hrs✍️
Service area updates content
Direct link, 7 days, no relay
7 days not 24 hours⚠️
Auto-escalation at T−72hrs
Admin alerted only if task untouched
Admin intervenes by exception🟢
Page stays live
Task closed, full audit trail
Zero downtime. Zero reactive cost.7
The Design
● CMS ADMIN
Notifications
⚠️ Expiring in 24h
/parking-permits goes offline in 24 hours
⚠️ Expiring in 24h
/housing/repairs expires in 24 hours
⚠️ Expiring in 24h
/environment/recycling
Must identify owners & email manually: every time
Before: relay
● PARKING SERVICES
📋 YOUR TASKS
DUE THIS WEEK
Update: Parking Permit Application
📄 /parking-permits · Expires 15 Jan
URGENT: 2 days
Update →
UPCOMING
Review: Permit Fee Structure
📄 /parking-fees · Expires 20 Jan
7 days remaining
Permit Zones Map
✓ Done 3 days early
Service area tasks
● ADMIN DASHBOARD
📊 CONTENT HEALTH
14
Active
11
On track
2
At risk
1
Escalated
NEEDS ATTENTION
Escalated: Housing: 72hrs no action
Auto-escalated: unresponsive
AUTO-ESCALATED
Contact →
TEAM PROGRESS
Parking67%
Environment100%
Housing0%
Admin oversight
8
Tradeoffs: Governance vs Speed, Control vs Autonomy
| Decision | Rejected | Chosen | The honest tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Notice window | 24hrs (status quo) | ✓ 7 days before expiry | 24hrs isn't enough for a realistic public sector update cycle. 7 days enables proper process. Cost: more active tasks simultaneously: manageable with priority labels. The lead time gain is worth the volume complexity. |
| Admin notification model | Notify admin for every task | ✓ Dashboard + escalation only | Every-task notifications recreate the bottleneck: admin is in the loop on everything, responsible for nothing. Dashboard gives governance visibility without noise. Admin's role changes from relay to overseer. Cost: admin must check dashboard proactively. |
| Task closure | Admin approves every task | ✓ Service area closes; admin can reopen | Admin approval re-inserted the bottleneck. Service areas own their content: they should own the task lifecycle. Admin retains audit rights. Cost: less admin control per task; oversight happens at dashboard level: which scales better anyway. |
| Missing ownership data | Ship routing → fall back to admin | ✓ Ownership wizard first (Phase 1) | Routing with incomplete ownership data creates a patchwork. A setup wizard ensures a clean launch where auto-assignment works for every page. Cost: 4–6 week delay. Non-negotiable: a partial solution that fails half the time is worse than a delayed complete one. |
9
What I Would NOT Build in v1
🚫 Multi-step approval chain
Service area → manager → legal → admin → publish. Right for regulated content eventually. Too complex for v1. Add in v2 once basic routing completion rates are proven.
🚫 Predictive lead times (ML)
Using history to predict which pages need 14 days vs 7 is genuinely valuable. Building it before validating that 7-day routing improves completion rates is premature. Validate the mechanism first.
🚫 Multi-site / multi-tenant
Many enterprise deployments run multi-site setups. Designing for that in v1 delays launch by months. Validate single-site, get data, then abstract to multi-site as a separate programme.
10
Execution Reality
4-sprint phased delivery: do NOT skip Phase 1
Phase 1 (Sprints 1–2)
Ownership data setup wizard. Map every page to a service area. This comes before the routing feature. Dashboard showing coverage % to drive toward 100%.
Phase 2 (Sprints 3–4)
Task creation engine, dual notification, admin dashboard, T−72hr escalation. 3-month pilot with 3–5 service areas. Measure: downtime ↓, admin time ↓, task completion ≥75%.
Critical dependency
Role-based access controls (service areas see only their own tasks). Change management: frame as "more agency, not more burden": or adoption will disappoint.
Engineering
~3–4 sprints
Biggest risk: partial ownership data at launch. Must handle "unknown owner" gracefully: route to admin as fallback, not silently fail. Role-based access non-negotiable.
IT / System Admin
Ownership data migration
Ownership data may live in spreadsheets or tribal knowledge. Setup wizard must handle partial data, disputed ownership, and "not yet assigned" states without blocking launch.
Change Management
Service area adoption
Service areas are getting new responsibilities. Framing: "You're not getting more work: you're getting 7 days notice and direct access instead of 24 hours and an email relay."
11
Metrics: The ROI Argument for Enterprise Buyers
North Star (Service)
↓ ~70%
Pages going offline per month due to missed expiry. The primary service failure this feature addresses. Measured as incidents per month before vs after rollout.
If downtime doesn't fall, the 7-day window may not be long enough: extend to 14 and re-test before assuming the mechanism is wrong.
Admin ROI
↓ ~40%
Admin time on content operations: from ~3hrs/week to ~1.8hrs. Measured via task log comparison. This is the procurement argument: quantifiable labour ROI.
The number enterprise buyers will ask about in procurement.
Task Completion
≥ 75%
Tasks completed by service areas before expiry without admin intervention. Below 60% signals adoption issues: investigate change management, not system design.
The leading indicator that the whole workflow model is actually functioning.
Case Study 03 of 03: B2B: Competitive Differentiation