Buzzword at Work - An Agile Approach to Spezialized DITA-based Authoring

2008-11-17
Buzzwords at Work
An Agile Approach to Specialized DITA-Based Authoring
G. H. Krause, Senior Manager TechDoc

Qimonda · G. H. Krause · Senior Manager TechDoc · 2008-11-17 · Page 2 Copyright © Qimonda AG 2008 · All rights reserved.
About Gunnar
Senior Manager for Technical Documentation at Qimonda AG
● DITA is on his mind since 2005 and he actively promotes it for two years.
● R&D engineer prior to 2002 working within the areas of design, design-for-
testability and product testing including located in the US and Germany.
● Always part of the job: knowledge transfer, training and project documentation
Gunnar is involved with group dita-users at yahoo.com
● http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/
Gunnar is member of the content wrangler community
● http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com/
You can network with Gunnar via plaxo.com
● http://ghkrause.myplaxo.com/

History
DITA Europe 2007
● Did DITA cross the chasm? DITA in the light of technology adoption life cycle.
X-PUBS 2008
● Chunking with confidence
DITA Europe 2008
● Buzzword at work: An agile approach to specialized DITA-based authoring
You will hear today
● The business case that opened the door to DITA
● Embrace DITA specialization
● Why agile project management does fit

Qimonda, a Top 5 Global DRAM Manufacturer*
• NYSE listed since August 9, 2006
• 13,500 employees globally**
• Major R&D operations in 6
locations on three continents
• Manufacturing facilities in
Europe, North America and Asia
• Broad and growing range of
DRAM products for infrastructure,
graphics, mobile and consumer
applications
• Standard DRAMs for use in PCs
and workstations
Our Global Footprint: FY 07 Revenues EUR 3.6bnOur Global Footprint: FY 07 Revenues EUR 3.6bn
18%12%
33%
37%
Europe
North America
Asia / Pacific
Japan
Our CompanyOur Company
Our ProductsOur Products Strong Customer BaseStrong Customer Base
*Source: Gartner, June 2008; **By end of calendar year 2007

Qimonda Sells DRAMs
The product portfolio is diversified and homogeneous at the same time
● Different interface standards
● Varying target applications
● Scalable in memory density
● Short product replacement cycles driven by technology improvements
There is more to share than styleguide and template
● Technical drawings
● Tables with technical parameters
● Feature lists
● Conceptual information

Qimonda TechDoc
Some Numbers
One central department with about ten people
● Information developers, authors, programmers, contractors, students
Tasks
● About 1000 documents as PDF to be administrated in DMS
● 150 releases of technical documents per month
● Up to 100 review and approval cycles per month
Deliverables are
● English only – for engineers to build systems and applications
● PDF only – for download, no hardcopies distributed

Motivation for Migration to Topics
Smaller chunks allow
● Semantic topics (DITA, Information Mapping)
● Work in parallel instead of sequentially in a team setup
● Avoid duplication of work during
► Authoring (reuse),
► Review (less redundancy),
► Translation (more 100% matches), and
► Rendering personalized deliverables (repurpose)
Workflow improvements

Workflow Improvements
Request
Submit
Req. assigned
to documents
Check building
blocks and correct
for each data sheet
Parallel Review
of N complete
Data Sheets
Approve &
Release
Old Workflow
DITA and CMS based Workflow
Request
Submit
Automatic
Document
Generation
Check building
blocks and correct
- keep reusable
Block Review
by expert(s)
Approve &
Release
Reuse
Ready
??
Automatic
Document
Generation
Yes
No

Workflow Change for Worse
But
● Authoring, review and translation might be more difficult
► Loss of context
● Require standardization of terminology, grammar, style
► Readers stumble over inconsistencies
● You must search for exisiting topics prior to writing a new one
► Tidious search? Duplication instead of reuse?

Workflow Change for Worse
And the problems take its toll
● You may need to use topics that others created and maintain
► Loss of control for authors
● More topics mean more workflows to run
► Increase of work for administration
● More metadata values or parameter needed to identify topics
► Increase risk of errors
Change of mindset, change of attitude, changed behaviour
► A tool change is a change in culture!

Business Case for Qimonda TechDoc
Saving
● Review workflow
+ Take the number of document-based reviews
× Multiply by average page count
× Multiply by average review time per page
× Multiply with number of reviewers selected on document level
– Subtract time needed by experts to review chunks
● Document rendition
► DTP tool blocks desktop for half an hour to 4 hours per PDF rendition
► Server based rendition supports batch rendition of document family
Increased efficiency of experts & information developers
We do not translate ... seems to be easier to calculate!

My Blend of Strategies
Guideline for Chunking
● Comply with DITA’s topic definition for task, concept, reference.
► Semantically correct topics.
● Restrict each topic to answer one question only.
► Increase reuse opportunities.
● One topic is to be reviewed by a single group of subject matter experts.
► Speed up review and approval cycle
● A topic belongs to a single product family or is of kind generic.
► Use generic topics for cross-family reuse

Map of Chunks
Reuse Pools
1-to-1
Topic Pool with linked image(s) Image Pool
relation
Footnote Pool
Attention/Note Pool
Pool of Rendition Settings
DITA Topic Types
Qimonda Topic Types
Topics
Sub maps
(chapter)
Maps
(for a family of
documents)
conref (N-to-N relation)
topicref (N-to-N relation)
other N-to-N relations
other 1-to-N relations
Rendition
Config
w/ ditaval &
variable
def.
DITA OT
FM Server
PDF

The New Qimonda TechDoc Approach
Old style Qimonda document New style
cover.fm
chapter_01.fm
chapter_02.fm
chapter_03.fm
...
chapter_08.fm
TOC.fm
imprint.fm
Cover page
Revision History
1 Chapter
1.1 Section
1.2 Section
2 Chapter
3 Chapter
3.1 Section
3.2 Section
...
8 Chapter
Table of Contents
Imprint
(Template)
(On the fly)
concept_01.xml
concept_01a.xml
reference_01b.xml
concept_02.xml
reference_02a.xml
reference_02b.xml
concept_03.xml
reference_03a.xml
task_03b.xml
...
reference_08.xml
(On the fly)
(Template)

Qimonda TechDoc
Tool Set
Structured FrameMaker 7.1 since 2004
New DITA-based Single-Sourcing CMS
● XMetaL Author and XMAX for editing linked to
● MS Sharepoint as repository
● DITA Open Toolkit for publication with
● Adobe FrameMaker Server as PDF rendering engine

Why DITA Specialization?
Qimonda has a docbook like homegrown DTD
My experience
● Document structure is stable
● But improvements for semantical tagging are needed again and again
Changing the Document Type Defintion (DTD)
● Needed urgently by pilot users
● Difficult to align across the company in a short time period
Effort and cost generated with each update
● Who pays for the migration in other projects?
● Who is responsible to test and update the XSLTs?

DITA Specialization
From Architectural Specification of DITA 1.1:
Chapter 5. DITA specialization
Specialization is the process by which new designs are created based off existing designs,
allowing new kinds of content to be processed using existing processing rules.
My experience
● Solves the time and cost issue in our company ☺
● Specialization gets easier and faster each time you do it
● Modular DTD files have many places with similar information confusing!
● Testing is difficult.
● If you do not practice you won’t learn.

Specialization 1 – Metadata
Metadata specialization
● The most valuable asset of your new CMS is your contents.
● You accrue hundreds of manhours to add value.
● You might need to migrate to another system.
● I do fear that I might do a migration to a more expensive Enterprise CMS
All Qimonda topics have the same extended metadata set
● Document type
● Access control
● Product metadata
● Revision history table

Screenshot
Specialization 1 – Metadata
Content is synchronized
with CMS metadata
New metadata fields &
structure introduced

Specialization 2 – Ditaval File
Authors use
● DITA enabled editor
● Metadata specialization
Why is ditaval.dtd not a topic
specialization?
This is a rather simple specialization
● Ditaval could serve as a “Hello World”
example of specialization ☺
● Of course an xslt is needed to convert
such topics in old-fashioned ditaval
files
I did a specialization for ant built file
to control DITA Open Toolkit, too.
SAM
PLE
SPEC
IALIZATIO
N

Specialization 3 – Reference Config Topic
Single Sourcing needs a golden source
● Documentation department wants DITA topic
● Engineers prefer Excel for technical information
Understanding your internal customer
● The engineer wants us to publish without learning a new tool
● The doc department accepts Excel sheets and SQL database as source
An automated approach is needed

Auto-Generated Reference Topics
from Single-Source Data Sources
Subject Matter Experts
Derived
Reference
Topics
Information Developers
Reference
Config
Topics
DITA-Enabled Editor
Other
Topics
Maps
XML Files
on Server
Excel
Files
VB Macro
SQL
Database
Web
Frontend
Topic Generator
Map update
to use derived
topics prior to
OTK processing
User
Tool
Data
Server based process
Single Source

Reference Config DTD and a Result

Agile Project Management
The good old waterfall model
● Books on Enterprise Content Management
● Many consultants want to sell big packages based on up-front
requirements
● Tekom study for CMS introduction
The rather new agile development model
● Manifest published 2001
● For innovative products, services, solutions
● Where boundary conditions and requirements are expected to shift
● For IT projects with lack of fitting out-of-the-box solutions
● Working software after each small iteration with small improvements

Mabe You Remember the
Algebra of sets for DITA (by G. Krause)
filename rules
structure specialization
and generalization
information
typing
on topic level information typing
within topics
indexing
multiple
reuse
strategies
hardware
domain
condition
attributes
with
Boolean
equations
metadata
attribute-
based filtering
attribute
speciali-
zation
domain specialization
in general
map
elements
topic structure
inline elements
cross
references
provides some
sample domainsprocedure topic
Config file based
rendering
variable definition
files

The Chasm !!!
Reasons for Agile Approach
Lack of resources & budget for a project with full-scale waterfall model
● Cyclical downturn in DRAM business started 2007
Small, skilled and motivated team
● New technologies like .NET, webservices, AJAX, and of course XML.
Early adopter mode for DITA
● We listen to others.
● Trial-and-error approach.
● DITA 1.2 to come, ...
Limited scope on technical customer documentation by management
● Team can stay focused but envisions best-practice-sharing within
company.

Project Schedule
Milestone 1 – Proof of concept(s)
● Iterations on concepts
● Basic integration of tools
● First topics and map
Milestone 2 – Pilot Usage
● Gather experience
● Step-by-step automation of tasks
● Operate on multi-user multi-task mode
Milestone 3 – Improve efficiency and extend coverage
● Ease usage of system
● Add document types, new users, new requirements

Agile or Fast
We are slow in completing the full system
● There is no clear line between development and maintenance mode.
● Tools are always working and still missing some requirements
We are fast in doing DITA and gain experience
● Other technical departments are still in discussion whether to start a DITA
project or not.
● Using the tools helps to identify real issues versus fear of change
There is a lot to change and learn
● DITA-based CMS solution is steadily growing

Summary
Review and rendition workflows are the drivers for DITA-based CMS
● How could your workflows profit from DITA?
DITA specialization enables opportunities
● Get your own DITA topics and domain with small or large adaptation
Agile project management fits
● Consider new ideas to make DITA happen at your place

Time for Questions & Comments
Workflow improvements,
of course!
I savvy AGILE
W
hen is the next
specialization workshop?
Cultural change?!

2008-11-17
Thank you
The World’s Leading
Creative Memory Company

Buzzword at Work - An Agile Approach to Spezialized DITA-based Authoring

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