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• Process and Workflow Task Force Thisgroupexaminedcurrentprocesses
and workflows to identify changes re-quired to support our content reuseinitiative.Theyconsideredtheflowofin-formationbetweenpeopleandsystems,aswellastheproductlifecycle.Thetaskforcecreatedprocessandworkflowdia-gramsshowingthetechnicalcommuni-cator’s role in the flow of informationthrough a product life cycle and therequired steps toproduce informationproductsinthisnewenvironment.Thishelpeddefinenewrolestobefilledinatopic-basedauthoringenvironment.
• Style Task Force This group created an updated style
guidetosupporttopic-basedauthoringandcontentreuseanddefinedtheedi-tors’roleandresponsibilities.Thestyleguide documented ways to write withaunifiedvoice, towriteforonlineandprintdeliverables,andtocreatetopicsasstand-aloneinformation.
• Tools and Technology Task Force This group researched potential tools
andtechnologiestosupporttopic-basedauthoring objectives. They created arequirementsdocumentandanevalua-tionplantotestauthoringtools.
Introducing ChangeAs the individual task forces met their
goalsandcompletedtheirdeliverables,webegantointroducepiecesofourcontent
summarizing lessons learned and pro-posingaplan for the future.Thecon-clusion: in addition to the benefits ofcontent reuse—increased consistency,accuracy, and efficiency—the team en-visioned a much larger opportunity inthefocuseddeliveryoftopic-levelinfor-mation to customers, who rely on ourtechnicalcontenttoselect,install,con-figure,use,andmaintainourproducts.
The pilot participants developed aplanandoutlinedstrategiestoaddresscritical success factors. One of thesestrategies included forming task forcesto involvethewholedepartment inre-shapingourprocesses.
Working in Task ForcesWe organized task forces of six to
eightmembers toworkonkeyaspectsofourcontentreusestrategy.Eachtaskforce established a mission statementand deliverables for its area of focus.Forseveralmonths,thetaskforcesmettocompletetheirdeliverables.
• Information Modeling Task Force This group worked on models that
would provide the foundation formoving the group forward into atopic-based authoring environment.They created a library of contenttypesalongwithinformationmodelsbased on user-needs analysis for ourvariouspublicationtypes.
Exploring the PossibilitiesAstheconceptsoftopic-basedauthor-
ing,contentreuse,andcontentmanage-mentstartedtotakeholdintheindustryseveral years ago, we began to wonderwhether we could use these strategiesto more fully leverage our technicalcontentasabusinessasset.Afterdiscus-sionswithmanagement,weweregiventhegreenlighttoformapilotteamtoexplore the possibilities. Eight peoplewith diverse technical communicationbackgrounds, including departmentmanagers,wereselectedtodevelopandexecutetheproject.
The group outlined the followinggoalsfortheproject:
• Test industry-leading methodologyforstructuringandchunkingcontentintotopics.
• Trynewrolesdifferentfromthecur-rent“technicalcommunicator”role.
• Demonstrateafewexamplesofinfor-mation reuse and highlight the po-tentialforfurtherrepurposingacrossmediatypesanddeliverables.
• Create draft versions of informationproductmodels,contentmodels,andtopic-basedauthoringguidelines.
• Driveouttechnologyrequirementstosupportthenewmethodology.
The four-month project culminatedwith a presentation to management,
Are you thinking about mov-ing toward a content reusestrategy? If so, consider ourmethod:Westartedbyselect-ingasmallteamtoresearchcurrenttrendsincontentre-use and determine possibleapplications.Fromthere,we
formed task forces to benefit frombroadexperienceasweworkedonspe-cific aspects of our proposed strategy.We thenbegan implementingchangesslowlytominimizetheimpactonthede-partmentandourabilitytomeetprojectdeadlines.
Ourtechnicalcommunicationgroupcomprises forty-eight members with14,000activepublicationsintwomajorproductdivisions.Thegroupparticipat-ing in the content reuse initiative hastwenty-fourmembers,includingmanag-ers, specialists, information architects,editors, and information developers(technical communicators), and pro-ducesroughly400neworrevisedpub-licationsperyear.
Ourdocumentationsupportsaglobalcompany that provides stand-alone in-dustrial components and enterprise-wide integrated systems for customersinavarietyof industries, includingau-tomotive, food and beverage, oil/gas,life sciences, material handling, andpackaging.
Moving Toward a Content Reuse
stRAtegy, By Jeanette P. evans, Associate Fellow, and Julianne K. Forsythe, Senior Member
Slowly and Carefully
16 December2008
usability
strategy to the department. To start, we held a two-day face-to-face workshop, gathering our people from all locations, to talk about breaking down content creation silos and to promote working together. Additionally, we reorganized the department around the new roles of editor, information developer, informa-tion architect, and technology specialist in order to support our evolving con-tent strategy.
Periodic training sessions helped to explain, clarify, and reinforce new con-tent development practices while giving department members an opportunity to voice opinions and discuss the changes. This training included our own topic-based authoring workshop, which intro-duced new writing standards based on the DITA concept, task, and reference topic types. We also created a topic standards handbook to help information develop-ers put these techniques into practice.
Here are some of the other activities we completed:
• Published an updated style guide topromote consistency in writing style and voice.
• Initiatedacontrolledvocabularyproj-ect to standardize commonly used terms and phrases within our content.
• Introduced a formal editing processwith a levels-of-edit approach.
• Conducted a user information life- cycle analysis to guide our ongoing content model development (see Figure 1).
• Releasedaformalcontentmodelforinstallation instructions, defining op-tional and required components for a typical publication.
• IntroducednewAdobeFrameMakertemplates designed to transition in-formation developers toward think-ing semantically rather than thinking in terms of formatting.
• BeganapilotprogramwithXMLau-thoring tools and DITA.
Where We Are NowOne of the biggest challenges in this
transition has been addressing process changes required to support topic-based authoring. We have to be sensi-tive to the impact of each new change
onourabilitytomeetprojectdeadlines.Looking forward, we need to considerthe conversion of legacy documenta-tion and the impact of that on existing translations. In addition, we face the challenge of managing topics instead of documents. Transitioning from a tra-ditional, book-based approach to topic-
based writing requires many changes. Our near-term goals are to create con-tent models, identify content reuse op-portunities, develop a unified writing style and voice, and encourage our in-formation developers to think and write in topics. While making the transition, we’ve purposely kept a slow pace in or-der to meet the demands of product re-leases and tight schedules.
Jeanette Evans ([email protected]) is an information developer at Rockwell Automation and holds an MS in Technical Communication Management from Mercer University. For the content reuse strategy de-scribed here, she was a member of the Style Guide and Process and Workflow task forces and is currently working toward implement-ing the strategy.
Julianne Forsythe ([email protected]) is a content management specialist at Rock-well Automation, with a BA in Business Administration from Baldwin-Wallace Col-lege. For the project described here, she was a member of the pilot team and led the Tools and Technology Task Force; she continues to support implementation of this project.
User information life-cycle analysis is a strategic component in planning for topic-based authoring and content reuse strategies. Understanding information requirements at each stage in the customer experi-ence drives out content models and deliverables.
Figure 1. User Information Life Cycle
ReuseMany organizations can benefit from
implementing a content
strategy. You may have done your research and mapped out a transition plan, but no matter how thorough you are, you’re bound to run into some
surprises. Moving slowly and carefully can make the transition smoother.
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