Webcast: Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA topic-based authoring

Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing

background image
ﬂickr: thelastminute

! Founder and president, Scriptorium
Publishing
! Content strategy for
tech comm
! Interested in collision of
content, publishing, and
technology

! My ID: @sarahokeefe
! Scriptorium: @ScriptoriumTech
! #techcomm or #dita may be appropriate

! Everyone is muted except for the
presenter
! Please ask your questions through the
Questions area in the webcast interface
! The presentation is being recorded;
attendees do not appear in the
recording

! Business case examples (with numbers)
! YMMV
! IANAL
! WYSIOO
! Big-picture musings on other issues
(without numbers)

! Estimate 30–50 percent of total
localization cost is desktop publishing
! With XML-based publishing, you can
squeeze that cost to under 10 percent
! Cost savings: $20K–$40K per $100K in
localization cost

! Baseline assumption:
! DITA = increased content reuse!
! 10,000 topics
! Development cost: $200 per topic
(4!hours x $50)
! 5% more content reuse = $100,000 in
savings (and additional savings in
localization)

! Calculate cost of updates in multiple
documents
! Consider error rates
! Don’t forget the mental health toll

! Software error messages
! Product speciﬁcations in product
database and datasheets
! Product descriptions
! Training
! Tech support

! Improve collaboration among writers
! Develop and enforce consistent style
standards

“You should not implement XML as a
substitute for creating a style guide.”

“Structure is no substitute for
management.”

! Share topics
! Communicate updates
! Minimize content “ownership” issues
! Smooth out inevitable conﬂicts
! Cooperate on assignments

Photo: www.christianholmer.com

! Multiple conditional dimensions
(platform, customer, audience, product)
! Huge number of possible variations
! Dynamic versioning instead of static
publishing of a limited number of
variations

! Eliminate redundancy
! More targeted information
! Meet customer requirement for
personalized documentation
! Enable more versioning than supported
in current toolset
! Enable dynamic publishing

! 40 variations of a deliverable
! Conﬁgure and publish one at a time:
! 1 hour per variant
! 40 hours of work per deliverable, per
release ($2,000)
! Dynamic publishing: publish once

! Tagging work does not change for static
versus dynamic publishing
! Programming effort to enable dynamic
publishing included in implementation
cost

! If product revenue is $1M per year, then
each week of availability is worth about
$20K in revenue.
! Accelerate delivery of ﬁrst language
! Reduce delays in shipping localized
versions

David Kelly
Senior Technical Consultant

www.scriptorium.com/blog/2010/09/the-promise-of-xml-publishing.html

! Source content in XML
! Transform to accommodate
user-generated content
! Use metadata to support uniﬁed search

! Topic-based rather than deliverable-
based publishing
! Incremental deliveries for localization
! Content deliveries decoupled from
software deliveries

! Measure how topics are used
! Act on information about:
! Popular topics
! Unpopular topics
! Unsuccessful searches
! Topics with lots of comments

! Source: “The state of structure in
technical communication,” 2009.
www.scriptorium.com/blog/2010/05/
the-state-of-structure-in-technical-
communication.html

! Localization
! Increased reuse
! Support for complex conditionality
! Faster time to market
! Support for new publishing architecture

! Software integration issues
! Complex output/formatting requirements
! Inconsistent source ﬁles
! Source ﬁles that are not topic-based
! Content management system
! People

! Dysfunctional teams
! Information hoarding during
implementation
! Tool-speciﬁc blinders
! Using XML/DITA to clone an existing,
problematic workﬂow

! Improve communication
! Improve collaboration
! Build trust
! Provide project roadmap early

! Do not reward this behavior
! Implicitly
! Explicitly
! Avoid communication bottlenecks
! Document project decisions
! Distribute project information

! Ask for open minds
! Consider new features, not just cloning
old features
! Try out a variety of XML tools

! Identify best and worst features of
current workflow
! Identify new requirements that can’t be
met with current workflow
! Understand how new workflow affects
authors

Topics 2,000+
Writers 10+
Supported languages 3+
Deliverable formats 2+

ﬂickr: booleansplit

! Researching adoption rates, issues, tools
! Open until March 1
! Participants get free results
! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/
structure
! Please participate, and tell your friends!

! February 8: Attractive DITA output (it IS
possible)!
! March: Trends in technical
communication, 2011
! April: Structured authoring survey
results

! Sarah O’Keefe
! www.scriptorium.com
! okeefe@scriptorium.com
! @sarahokeefe

Webcast: Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA topic-based authoring

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