You have DITA. Now what?
More companies are asking this question as DITA adoption increases. For many of our customers, the first wave of DITA means deciding whether it’s a good fit for their content. The companies that choose to implement DITA find that it increases the overall efficiency of content production with better reuse, automated formatting, and so on.
How do you know it’s time to move to XML? Consult our handy list of indicators.
One common roadblock to content strategy is a lack of funding. This post describes how to get budget, even in lean years (and recently, they have all been lean years!).
You can justify intelligent content with efficiency–more reuse, cheaper translation, better content management. The true value of intelligent content, however, is unlocked when you connect content across the organization.
This year’s tekom/tcworld conference reinforced the ongoing doctrinal chasm between North American technical communication and German technical communication.
I am speaking, of course, of the proper role of DITA in technical communication. If any.
In a recent post on lean content strategy, I wrote about a focus on waste reduction:
After creating a nice automated XML-based process, waste in formatting is eliminated, and we declare victory and go home. Unfortunately, the organization is now producing irrelevant content faster, and the content organization is now positioned as only a cost center.
Is your content perceived as a commodity?
Lean manufacturing begat lean software development which in turn begat lean content strategy.
What does lean content strategy look like?
The roles and responsibilities in an XML (and/or DITA) environment are a little different than in a traditional page layout environment. Figuring out where to move people is a key part of your implementation strategy.
Design and automation are often positioned as mutually exclusive–you have to choose one or the other. But in fact, it’s possible to deliver content in an automated workflow that uses a stellar design. To succeed, you need a designer who can work with styles, templates, and other building blocks instead of ad hoc formatting.
More content across more devices requires scalability–and that means more automation. A strategic approach to content needs to incorporate both design and automation as constraints and find the right balance between the two.
