In order to leverage Alfresco, you have to have a very large dataset. So if you're just working on a couple of million documents, it's probably not worthwhile installing it. Also, if you're looking for a look of customization, go with Alfresco, but if you're just going to use standard, out-of-the-box connectors, I would go with a different solution. I'd rate Alfresco six out of ten.

Find expert people with years of knowledge. Alfresco is a complex platform. The better the engineer, the less the chance of having major issues with the product.

Start with a smaller project and bring in an experienced Alfresco consultant that is either Alfresco Certified Engineer (ACE) or Alfresco Certified Administrator (ACA). Or anyone that can provide extensive experience from deploying Alfresco into production. Preferably the Alfresco consultant should be able to talk you through a network architecture for an Alfresco deployment, content model design, how the system can be customized, how the workflow integration works, and finally how you will migrate existing content into Alfresco in an efficient way.

If you are looking for features such as storing your content centrally, an automatic version, content automation, record management, access from mobile/desktop/web, automatic metadata extraction from electronic documents then Alfresco is a good choice.

As long as they maintain DoD certification, it is a useful product. Everything will cost. I didn’t give it too high of a rating, mainly because the use is ad hoc. We do not have a lot of rules in place for governance, content, metadata, or disposition at this time.

If you are looking for a product which has all the common functionalities such as document and media management, record management, workflows, document indexing and searching, then in that case, Alfresco is the platform that you need.

If you have a large amount of documents, go for Alfresco Enterprise Edition.

Involve an Alfresco partner for the project. The training is basic. Buy Alfresco certifications and boot camp trainings.