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This case study has been written by Mette Nyberg, Senior Technical Writer at Schneider Electric A/S, Denmark. When you know you are right – go for it. This presentation is about a 15 year old journey (or rather challenge) to leverage the contents of product documentation in training material. In other words – apply single sourcing. In the early days of single sourcing (like the mid-90s) you were all dressed up and nowhere to go. Meaning that you could go the whole 9 yards to make your content as structured and effective as possbile – but applying single sourcing was still a matter of copy pasting the text from one output to the next. Not exactly the most efficient way of working. When Flare was introduced to the market, single soucing immediately got a different flavor. Now it was possible to do real single sourcing making use of the features in Flare such as conditions, variables, snippets. Technical communicators also started to think more in terms of task based documentation rather than writing page after page .These tasks were described in topics and these topics could be reused in multiple projects. Technical communicators are more or less used to adopting new methods and making paradigm shifts. This may not be true for everybody in an organization, especially when writing or developing contents is not the core competency. Mette Nyberg has worked with training instructors for many years trying to make them see the benefits of single sourcing between product documentation and training material. This presentation first made at the MadCap User Forum in Elsinore, November 2013 explains how new concepts such as single sourcing can be hard to grasp for non-technical writers. But it is also a tale of what can eventually happen if you keep believing that what you do is the right thing.
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Single Sourcing:Documentation and Training Material
Hydraulic Simulation & Optimization
Mette Nyberg
Sr Technical Communicator
31 October 2013
AgendaS
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o My road to single sourcing training material and product documentation
o Our previous method of creating training material
o Our next generation of training material
o Learning points / Return on investment (ROI)
My road to single sourcingS
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o Single sourcing – my beacon for almost 15 years
o Single sourcing: - First a matter of structure - Now also with tools support
o A loooooooong and winding road
o Job security at risk? Not at all: Try quality and effective processes
Previous training material ..1 o Two (long) Word documents in multiple
versions
o Approx. 70% reuse from product documentation
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Previous training material ..2 o Two versions of Power Point slide decks in
multiple versions
o Redundancy in pptx notes and Word documents
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New scenarioS
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o New organization structure =new ways of doing things
o Train-the-trainer material
o Lobby work finally paid off
o Optimizing the training material
o Taking ownership of training material
Challenges for a turn-aroundS
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o Explaining the concept of single sourcing
o Deciding on the tool for developing training material
o Agreeing on the level of handout material
Next generation training material
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Single sourced material
o 1 slide deck
o 1 set of instructor notes
o 1 set of exercises
o Using a version control system
Demo timeS
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Slide decks:Conceptual overview
Exercises Handout material
I’m cute and just along for the ride
Quotes from colleaguesS
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Peter Johnsen, support & instructor
Sharing the burden
“It’s so much better than the old material.“
Quotes from colleaguesS
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“The look of the material will be closer related to the general help file giving the different components of the software package a more unified look and ultimately giving the software a more professional appearance to the course participant.”
“Maintaining the course material will be a lot easier in the future. “
Learning points / ROI
o You will need a good deal of - clout- patience- confidence (that what you are doing is right)
o Work smarter
o Changing old habits, procedures, and processes take time
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Thanks for being here
HappyHappy
