This document discusses keys to managing distributed content teams. It emphasizes that standards and governance are necessary to enable effective collaboration at scale. Standards provide common boundaries for teams to work within, while governance guides how standards are developed, communicated and enforced through clear roles and processes. The document proposes a model with a Core Team responsible for overall strategy and policies, and Extended Core Teams focused on specific domains to develop standards and guidance. It provides best practices around communication, engagement, accountability and standardizing the standards process. The overall message is that as teams distribute, standards and governance are needed to maintain order and continued progress.

1. October 4, 2019
Managing a Distributed
Content Cycle
Teams, governance, standards, and why
you need all three
Rob Kimm
DITA Specialist
at IXIASOFT

2. 1. Introductions
2. Challenges of a distributed team
3. Keys to success
4. Models and process examples
5. Best practices
Agenda

3. DITA Specialist at IXIASOFT
Rob.Kimm@ixiasoft.com
• Based in St Paul, Minnesota, USA
• DITA architect, user and evangelist since 2006
• DITA specialist at IXIASOFT for 3 years
• Former IXIASOFT customer
• Conference speaker on DITA, information architecture
and industry best practices
About Rob

4. Distributed teams present multiple challenges
• Some challenges are technical/ architectural and manifest
themselves in the content
• Other challenges are rooted in people and team dynamics
• These challenges increase when distributed teams must share
content and processes
• All these challenges increase exponentially as organizations grow

5. So what’s the answer?
Standards and Governance

6. Standards
• To manage scalable growth and effective collaboration, standards are a necessity
• Standards provide a common space with defined boundaries within which you can solve
problems as you see fit.
• Standards are everywhere – speech, music, driving…how much a bushel of shelled corn
should weigh… Everything scalable is standardized in some way.
• “But, don’t we already have standards? Isn’t that why we’re using DITA?”
o Rob’s standard line on DITA use: “There are 10 ways to do everything. 7 of them are stupid…”
o DITA provides a stable platform and community guidance/best practices
• Highly capable, witty, and charming DITA specialists are also available as consultants from
some service providers for a modest fee… (*ahem*)
It would be nice if everyone just did the right thing…but they don’t.

7. Do we really need standards? A horror story…
• Once upon a time, Rob got in over his head…
• Company mandate to harmonize demand management processes
• Met with fierce resistance: "We know our own business best"
• Asked multiple facilities what a specific data field (quantity) in the database meant
o 1 = 1 consumer-size roll
o 1 = 1 case (24 consumer-size rolls)
o 1 = 1 ‘jumbo’ (a gigantic, semi-finished goods level roll of tape that stood 12 feet tall weighed 4
and a half tons, and equaled roughly 18,000 consumer-size rolls)
• They all understood the question and could justify their answer
• All their answers were accurate in their own context
• Accuracy and clarity still made effective collaboration impossible.
Why? They lacked a shared standard that spanned individual contexts.

8. Governance
• Governance = guidance + decision-making
• Standards are the rules. Governance is how the rules are made, communicated,
supported and enforced.
• Good governance requires engagement, investment, commitment and active
participation
o Ivory Tower proclamations are rarely effective
• Governance ensures that roles, responsibilities, ownership and accountability are clearly
defined
o What do you have? Who’s doing it?
• Creates hard-coded mechanism for feedback, growth, and continual process
improvement
Without governance, processes eventually stop working. Standards atrophy, policies no
longer match reality and are ignored. Chaos is inevitable.

9. The big picture…
• Create a community that…
o Has a shared vision and vested relationships to the larger
strategy
o Can collaborate horizontally and vertically
o Has shared standards and hard-wired mechanisms to
enforce them, maintain them, and allow them to evolve
over time in a planned, managed, and deliberate way
o Has clear roles, responsibilities, lines of authority and paths
of accountability
o Has shared success measures
o Is aligned at the strategic level but has the freedom and
flexibility to be tactical locally

10. Core Team + Extended Core Teams

11. Core Team
• Responsible for overall tool/ process/ architecture governance and management
• Sets overall strategy: How do we leverage our capabilities to achieve our collective goals?
• Owns overall policies: How do we manage risk in executing on our strategy?
• Communicates global strategy and policies
• Accountable to functional groups/ BUs
• Reports through business owner/ sponsor
• Comprised of representatives from:
o Each location/region
o Each functional group, product team or business unit
o Individual disciplines (IA, IT, Standards, etc.)

12. Extended Core Team
• First point of contact for functional groups with issues in ECT’s domain
• Distinct charter and ownership of associated standards
• Membership
o Chaired by Core Team member
o 1-3 Core Team Members as permanent members
o 2-5 provisional members rotate regularly
• Reports directly to Core Team
• Deliverables: standards, SOPs, guidance, supporting materials and domain-specific
information sharing events
• Empowers membership, focuses expertise, enables efficient problem solving

13. Example: Content Standards Extended Core Team
• Team Charter: “The Content Standards Extended Core Team is responsible for developing
and delivering DITA standards and best practices to IXIASOFT’s content teams.”
• 8 members; 3 from Core Team, 5 ad hoc, chaired by Sr. Tech Writer *
• Ad hoc members quarter by quarter
• Meets 2x/ quarter plus ad hoc to address critical issues
• Publishes agenda/org level tasks 6 quarters in advance to allow interested potential
members to engage
• Interested potential members apply through management
h/t to Amber Swope
*Bonus content: Rob’s recipe for the perfect Extended Core Team:
• 1 leader
• 4 "Steady Eddies"
• 2 former juvenile delinquents
• 1 curmudgeon

14. Best Practices

15. Best Practices: Communication
• Core Team communicates globally to all audiences
• ECTs provide targeted communications to specific audiences
• Regular communications on a published schedule
• Create opportunities for engagement, feedback, and dialog

16. Best Practices: Engagement and Participation
• Publish meeting results and actions
• Clearly communicate goals, charters and priorities
• Create opportunities for interaction, especially at ECT level
o Presentations, training, lunch-and-learn seminars
• Broadcast/ record/ distribute special events
• Establish recognition opportunities for exceptional
contributions, successes and significant milestones
o “Team X reduced localization costs by nn%...”
• Create opportunities for engagement, feedback, and dialog

17. Best Practices: Roles, Responsibilities, Accountability
• Establish clear ownership of processes, domains and standards
• Empower process owners to proactively solve problems
• Require commitment to participation from all groups using services
o “Pay to play”
• Celebrate successes, openly learn from failures
• Create opportunities for engagement, feedback, and dialog

18. Best Practices: Standardize your standards
• Use common templates for status reporting, policy and
guidance docs, standards and communications
• Use common operating procedures for Core Teams/ ECTs,
governing councils, etc.
• Empower process owners to proactively solve problems
• Require commitment to participation
• Celebrate successes, openly learn from failures
• Create opportunities for engagement, feedback, and
dialog

19. QUESTIONS?