This document summarizes Dominic Doherty's experience leading a content management project at Edwards to transition their technical documentation from various authoring tools like Word and Framemaker to a structured framework using XML and DITA. It describes the initial state of their documentation, the goals and risks of the project, how they selected tools and developed a business case. It then outlines the various phases of the project, including training workshops, technical configuration meetings, and user testing. It concludes by discussing challenges faced and recommendations for future projects.

1. JOINING THE STRUCTURED HIGHWAY:
FROM FIRST GEAR TO THE FAST LANE
Dominic Doherty June 2016

2. CONTENTS
 Who am I – who are Edwards
 How did Edwards create documentation?
 The content management project
 The route I used to build a business case
 How did I get buy in from around the business and from authors?
 Bumps in the road
 Recommendations
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3. Interaction
Innovation Commitment
WHO AM I?
 Educated as an Aeronautical Engineer
 Joined Edwards as a technical author
 Currently Global Tech Pubs manager
 Team of 24 globally
 I am a trained chef and worked as sous chef for two
different restaurants in Sussex!
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4. 4
Industrial
Technique
Industrial Technique Service
MVI Tools and Assembly Systems
Industrial Assembly Solutions
General Industry Tools
and Assembly Systems
Chicago Pneumatic Tools
Group Management and corporate functions
Compressor Technique Service
Industrial Air
Oil-free Air
Vacuum Solutions
Gas and Process
Medical Gas Solutions
Airtec
Compressor
Technique
Mining and Rock Excavation
Technique
Mining and Rock Excavation Service
Underground Rock Excavation
Surface and Exploration Drilling
Drilling Solutions
Rock Drilling Tools
Rocktec
Common service providers
President and CEO
Board of Directors
Construction
Technique
Construction Technique Service
Specialty Rental
Portable Energy
Road Construction Equipment
Construction Tools

5. CUSTOMERS EVERYWHERE
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North
America22%
South
America9%
Asia/
Australia28%
Europe31%
Africa/
Middle East10%
Figures show percent of revenues, 2014.

6. FIRST GEAR: SETTING THE SCENE
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 10,000+ technical manuals
 32 different languages
 Word or Unstructured Framemaker
 Adobe Illustrator
 All documents stored in Microsoft Sharepoint
 Different sites use different tools and processes
 No author had used XML/DITA before

7. PROLIFERATION
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1 1 change
43 43 affected motors
129
3 information changes: Size,
weight, current length
1290 10 manuals
12900 10 translations

8. Interaction
Innovation Commitment
CONSULTANTS
 Independent from software
 Content experts from many walks of life
 Been doing it for 25 Years
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9. Interaction
Innovation Commitment
THE MEKON APPROACH
 Content Audit
 Content Report
 Tool selection
 Prototyping
 Training
 Deployment
 Support
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10. PROJECT PLAN
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11. 11

12. THE GAPS
 The lack of a global process
 Too much admin
 Increasing translation costs
 Disconnect between authors and engineers
 Lack of consistency in language/terminology
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13. THE RISKS
 Mistakes in the documentation could cause injury, loss of life or customer downtime
 Legal liability – missing or incorrect documentation
 Loss of accreditation
 Lost business – documentation delays and financial penalties
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14. TOOL SELECTION
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15. PROTOTYPING
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16. USER STORIES
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I want to be
able to find
content…
It should be
possible to
search using a
wildcard
character

17. BUILDING A BUSINESS CASE

18. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
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19. OPTIONS
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20. PICKING THE OPTIONS
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21. THE CENTRE STAGE EFFECT
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22. ROI CALCULATION
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-500,000
0
500,000
1,000,000
1,500,000
2,000,000
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
Year

23. BUY IN FROM AROUND THE BUSINESS
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24. 2ND GEAR: PROJECT STARTS

25. WHAT IS XML?
 Remember that your team may never have seen XML before
 XML authoring is very different to unstructured authoring in
Framemaker
 DITA is an alien concept to someone who has been using
Word
 Writing standalone topics is very different to writing sections
of a manual
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26. Interaction
Innovation Commitment
PROJECT CHAMPIONS
 In a global company you cannot champion this amount
of change alone
 Choose champions in the authoring community
 Choose a champion on each site
 Don’t have to choose lead authors…
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27. REMEMBER TO GIVE FEEDBACK
 To management – they need to feel comfortable that you are on track to deliver what you
promised
 To your team – they need to understand where they are in the project roadmap
 To the collaborators – they need to know what changes are coming and when they are coming
 To the consumers – they need to know what is happening and how it will improve their ability to
access your content
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28. WORKSHOPS
 10 workshops in 10 weeks
– DITA
– Reuse
– Element usage
– Map structure
– Conditions
– Images
– Specialisations
– Taxonomy
– Workflow
– Oxygen walkthrough
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29. TECHNICAL ANALYSIS MEETING (TAM)
 Meeting to create a bespoke configuration
 Decisions taken during workshops fed into the TAM
 Mekon and Ixiasoft led the meeting
 5 days long
 Outcome was to create a requirements spec
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30. USER ACCEPTANCE TESTING (UAT)
 Installation took a week
 Followed by user training in DITA CMS
 Created scenarios based on realistic processes
 Core team ran through scenarios
 Expected outcome / actual outcome
 Scenarios included translated content
 Allowed 2 weeks and spent 6 weeks in total
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31. THE FAST LANE:
SYSTEM LIVE

32. BUMPS IN THE ROAD
 Learning rates
 Knowledge gap
 Underestimated resource requirement
 Training plan
 Taxonomy
 Stylesheets
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33. MY RECOMMENDATIONS
 Use a dedicated project manager
 Understand the roles required
 Who does what?
 Roadmap
 Understand your content
 Scalability
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34. PROJECT PLAN
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35. ANY QUESTIONS?
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36. CONTACT DETAILS
Dominic.Doherty@edwardsvacuum.com
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