Let’s Work Together: How SASB Implemented DITA and Changed their Corporate Culture
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board™ (SASB™) develops and disseminates industryspecific sustainability accounting standards that help public corporations disclose material, decision-useful information to investors. Because the Standards team needed to capture their research, track how it drove the standards, and publish the standards via multiple channels, SASB implemented DITA with a CMS. Jessi Lawrence and Amber Swope worked with the SASB organization to change the culture from addressing individual team's pain points to collaboratively designing the right solution for everyone. They leveraged their agile development approach with the content and tool development, and developed tools and processes that organically adapt to the Standards team's existing daily workflow but still solve the larger problem of disconnected processes. Not only did the project change how the content creators and publishers work, it changed their relationship with the IT team, which moved from being a support organization to truly being a service organization. In this session, you will learn how implementing DITA is more than an opportunity to address technical and business requirements. It's your chance to break down barriers between teams and work together. Jessi and Amber describe how implementing DITA with a CMS not only changed how the content creators and publishers work, but also changed their relationship with the IT team, which moved from being a support organization to truly being a service organization.
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Let’s Work Together: How SASB Implemented DITA and Changed their Corporate Culture
- 1. 7/1/2019 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon Tackling Content Strategy as a Start-Up Non-Profit
- 2. © 2017 SASB™ Tackling Content Strategy as a Start-Up Non-Profit Jessi Lawrence Business Systems Analyst SASB Amber Swope DITA Specialist DITA Strategies Turning a technology project into an organization-wide discussion about content management @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 3. “The mission of SASB is to develop and disseminate sustainability accounting standards that help companies disclose material, decision-useful information to investors in a cost-effective way.” As a standards setter, our externally-facing content is central to our mission. But until recently, that content was sequestered away in Word docs and Dropbox labyrinths. © 2017 SASB™ The SASB mission Improved sustainability disclosure enhances market efficiency 7/1/2019 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 4. The “Worst of Both Worlds” 7/1/2019 Funding Maturity2000 1950 19251975 $1,000,000 $500,000,000 SASB $250,000,000 USGBC CFA Institute $100,000,000 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 5. Business Maturity Culture Change Knowledge Transfer 28 Our challenges What were we trying to solve? © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 6. Question Everything Building Lines of Communication Wholesale Buy-in 28 Our opportunities What did our unique position make possible? © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 7. Transition from an approach to artifacts 28 Solutions Reconciling challenges & opportunities © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 Thanks to Madebyoliver for icons To an approach to lifecycle @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 8. Mitigating Change Averseness Managing Expectations 28 Solutions Reconciling challenges & opportunities © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 Thanks to Madebyoliver for icons @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 9. 28 Solutions A comprehensive, integrated approach © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 10. 28 Information Architecture Supports all primary activities © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 11. 28 © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 Content Model to Data Model @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 12. 28 © 2017 SASB™7/1/2019 Processes changes Resetting old habits In order to work together effectively, we needed to flip the script
- 13. © 2017 SASB™ How did we work together? 7/1/2019 Defined our requirements based on actual user needs An “agile” approach to evolve with users’ needs Encouraged engagement from top down Series of bite-sized proofs of concept @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 14. © 2017 SASB™ Summary 7/1/2019 DITA project is new model for inter-team projects Our solution works, and continues to evolve with users’ needs Support ServiceCollaboration “Rather than dreading our next step of developing transforms for publishing our next round of Standards, we are looking forward to working with our content to create consistent, traceable, customer-specific, and visually appealing deliverables.” @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
- 15. © 2017 SASB™ Questions? Contact us! 7/1/2019 jessi.lawrence@sasb.org amber@ditastrategies.com Icons: Madebyoliver Images: Amy Perl/SASB @SASB @DITAStrategies #LavaCon
Editor's Notes
- Mention this is based on the paper?
- Needed a way to leverage research, needed robust versioning and traceability Essentially: needed a content strategy
- 2015 Funding: CFA Institute: 426,800,000 (p 19) USGBC: 104,624,969 (p ) SASB: 6,098,249 (p 58) Start date: CFA: 1947 USGBC: 1993 SASB: 2011
- Business Maturity = very little process, a lot of last minute scrambling Culture Change = “Survival mechanisms carve deep practices” (less divide and conquer, more e pluribus unum – amber) Knowledge transfer = pockets of knowledge sequestered away, much like our content
- Question everything – freedom to start from scratch Building lines of communication – small enough and invested enough to really start establishing those channels Wholesale buy-in – our coo, recognizing how central to our mission content strategy was, supported us from the start
- Problem wasn’t publishing, the problem was authoring. Heal the cause, not the symptom. Publishing would follow
- Needed to be flexible. Needed to be realistic. Learned from mistakes (hopefully you can too!)
- Thought it was a tech problem, it was all four)
- NOTE: point is to show how DITA aligned to support your data model (point of this slide is just to show about specialization??) Highly structured fit for us, because it solved a major problem of consistency. Part of addressing authoring problem. (if content is entered cleanly, it will be published cleanly right away!)
- Trailblazing, but building blocks for business maturity. Here’s how: (next slide) (Do we need a whole slide for this? It is crucial and the slide is nice)
- Iteration was everything for us. We worked closely and often with users to understand what they were looking for, while allowing them the space to change their minds. Got everyone involved to ensure no one had different versions of the projects in their minds. Did everything in little pieces to avoid spending entire quarters producing something that was immediately obsolete
- Were forging some new trails here, but did so mindfully, respectfully, collaboratively.