Confessions of a DITAfile: What’s IN and What’s OUT for Project Success

& why are we here

Who are we

Who are we

Confessions of a DITAfile:

What’s In & What’s Out for Project Success

—Paula Toth

Who are we

http://www.techprose.com

Who are we

• Wisdom Story

• Confession

• 2 Major IN Things

• 2 Major OUT Things

• Tips

• Top 10 INs

• Top 10 OUTs

• Summary

• Group Exercise

• Questions

Who are we

Wisdom Story

Youthful writing

• Book reports

• Expositions

Make critical decisions based on tolerance not love!

Wisdom Story

Confession

• Chunk into blocks

• Move blocks

• Reuse blocks

• Tag and sort blocks

• Share blocks

Confession

• Reduce content development and maintenance costs

• Enhance user experience

Confession

Confession

I love DITA because

• I’m lazy

Confession

I love DITA because

2. I dream big

Confession

I love DITA because

1. I’m lazy

Confession

I love DITA because

2. I dream big

Blocks would magically appear

In all the right places

What’s IN

Push button publishing

What’s IN

What’s IN

Automated comment and reviewer tracking

What’s IN

Automation for repetitive tasks…

• Entering content

• Managing DITA tags

• Standardizing terminology

• Entering taxonomies and indices

• Publishing to multiple outputs, even mobile

What’s IN

Content from application source code inserted in publications

Content Times

Business Rules

Parameter Descriptions

Works as advertised!

What’s IN

1. DITA supports automation

What’s IN

Think differently about content

What’s IN

Think beyond linear books …

What’s IN

Searchable, interconnected, interactive content delivered to any device

What’s IN

Spicing Up DITA With a Little

Automated delivery of the right content, to the right people, at the right time

What’s IN

What’s IN

DITA can blow you mind

What’s IN

2. DITA supports an ecosystem of dynamic, accessible content that is the basis of knowledge transference

Love the two INs

• Automate repetitive tasks

• Create an ecosystem of dynamic and accessible content

What’s IN

To get the IN things

• Tolerate what’s OUT

What’s OUT

Changes that require and investment of …

• Time

• Money

• Commitment

Need …

• Vision

• Stakeholder support

What’s OUT

What’s OUT

Make the business case 1. Identify the pains and drivers

2. Show how solving the pains adds to the bottom line

3. Show how DITA addresses the pains

4. Calculate the ROI

5. Support the benefits

–Surveys, metrics, case studies, estimates, budgets, and roadmaps

6. Do a pilot as proof of concept

7. Win stakeholder buy-in

8. Pitch to management

1. NOT making a strong business case

What’s OUT

Beware of potholes

What’s OUT

DITA is not a boxed product

What’s OUT

What’s OUT

DITA is about …

• Automation

• Creating an ecosystem of knowledge transference

Rather than working with one boxed product, work with a toolbox

What’s OUT

What’s OUT

Software products

• Content conversion

• Authoring

• Grammar checker

• Language control

• Content repository/version control

• Review workflow

• Content/XML rendering engine

• Output transforms

• Translation management

What’s OUT

People

• DITA aware project managers or advisors

• DITA aware writers, editors, illustrators, and publishers

• DITA aware software/web developers

• Information architects and strategists

• CMS advisors

• Process analysts and strategists

• Governance committee

• Trainers and mentors

• Help desk support

2. Trying to use DITA like a boxed product instead of a toolbox of helpful products and people

What’s OUT

Tolerate the two OUTs

• NOT making a strong business case

• Trying to use DITA like a boxed product

What’s OUT

Focus on vision

―What is the pain I am trying to solve and how would solving that pain add to the corporate bottom line?‖

Tips

• State the pains and benefits in a short, concise paragraph

• Make a presentation by following these steps

1. Show how solving the pains adds to the bottom line

2. Show how DITA addresses the pains

3. Calculate the ROI

4. Support the benefits

–Surveys, metrics, case studies, estimates, budgets, and roadmaps

5. Do a pilot as proof of concept

6. Win stakeholder buy-in

7. Pitch to management

Tips

Tips

A hammer is to the architect, as DITA is to your vision

Keep pilots small

• Under 50 pages

• No tricky features

• Default DITA OT output

Tips

Plan for simplicity

• Branded transform outputs

• Limited number of DITA tags and conditions

• Content structures

• Processes

Tips

Set expectations realistically

• DITA ripens over time

Tips

Every NO…

Just puts you on the long road to YES!

Tips

Top 10 INs

• Build vision first

• Know your business goals and requirements, then define success criteria

• Calculate ROI both before and after the pilot

• Track how you are holding to your original vision

• Simplify everything you can including brand formatting

• Separate roles for publishing, authoring, and editorial (indexing, linking, taxonomy)

• Automate anything that makes sense and adds ROI especially publishing to multiple output channels and translation

• Train your people and create a mentoring program

• Provide help desk support

• Promote DITA adoption as a process, not an event!

Top 10 OUTs

• The one and done attitude—instead of systems and teams evolving over time

• Fearing loss of control—instead of trusting your team members

• Siloing content—instead of sharing content across publications, products, and business units

• Book ownership—instead of topic ownership assigned by subject expertise

• Reviewing entire books—instead of reviewing topics within a subject area

• Converting unstructured content—instead of structuring content before conversion

• High-priced CCMS systems—instead of stealthy, lean native XML CCMS systems

• Using all the DITA element tags—instead of restricting the number of tags

• Creating output formats that limit search engine and device access to individual topics, such as PDF and some help outputs—instead of search engine and device friendly outputs, such as HTML

• Not valuing content as a corporate asset; after all, a lot of time and money goes into creating and maintaining it so it might as well be accessible and useful to the reader!

DITA changes

• How you view content

• How you work with it

And

• Could blow your mind!

Summary

Easy to Love Effort to Tolerate

Automation possibilities Developing the business case and gaining stakeholder support

Support for creating dynamic, accessible and intelligent content

Collecting a toolbox of helpful products and people with diverse skills to play on collaborative, cross-functional teams

Summary

Clear vision ensures implementation

Vision Exercise

The CEO has stated that he will fund any initiative that helps him address his major pain.

CEO Pain: Adoption rates of products/services are too low. They need to be raised.

Your Driver: Users can’t find getting started content.

Given experience with DITA and content management, What can you do positively effect the bottom line?

Vision Exercise

Vision Exercise

Make the content more accessible

–Reorganize content for clarity

–Apply an information model

–Create output that is searchable on the Internet

–Optimize content for SEO

–Create a user assistance portal

–Create output to mobile devices

–Provide feedback loops from users to authors

Any questions

925-956-4215

WWW.techprose.com

Paula@techprose.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulatoth

Happy Authoring!