Practical AEM - Insights for dev teams building on AEM.

Background

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is one of the most powerful digital experience platforms—but it’s also one of the most complex to implement at scale. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to serve as an AEM architect on several enterprise programs, guiding teams through high-stakes migrations, platform consolidations, and multi-tenant rollouts.

Challenges

Every project brought its own challenges:

• Scaling AEM for millions of users while maintaining performance.
• Designing content structures that are flexible yet governable.
• Integrating with third-party systems analytics, personalization, commerce without creating fragile dependencies.
• Coaching teams new to AEM, bridging the gap between “textbook AEM” and real-world AEM.

Solutions

Through trial, error, and experience, I developed patterns and approaches that consistently worked:

• Blueprint driven architecture for multisite setups.
• Pragmatic use of Launches and Content Fragments to reduce content sprawl.
• Dispatcher rules that balance security with simplicity.
• Establishing governance playbooks for authors, developers, and admins.

Lessons Learned

Practical AEM is about what you don’t find in the documentation. A few lessons that stood out:

• Complexity compounds fast—simplicity wins every time.
• Invest in coaching authors and developers, not just building features.
• Build for content lifecycle, not just launch day.
• Treat open source tools and AEM add-ons as part of the ecosystem, not afterthoughts.

Coaching

Beyond architecture and delivery, I found myself acting as a coach helping product owners, developers, and content teams think in “AEM terms.” This meant:

• Running hands-on workshops on tagging, DAM usage, and workflows.
• Translating business goals into technical tradeoffs.
• Mentoring developers on Sling Models, HTL, and backend integration.

👉 Practical AEM is my way of sharing these experiences bridging theory with practice, and helping teams avoid the traps I once fell into.