Take a Dose of Realism in Planning the People Aspects of DITA Implementation

By Naveh Greenberg, Director, U.S. Defense Development, DCL

Managing your content using a standard such as Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) seems like a wise decision… reduced maintenance costs, improved translation and production timelines, higher quality, new channel and output options, and more. Of the 12 companies we recently surveyed that have managed a DITA implementation, most agreed that these were contributing factors. But they also came to the conclusion that they underestimated the people factors. If you’re in the midst of deciding to convert your content creation and maintenance to the DITA standard, consider their experience as you make your plans.

Experts often list content reuse as one of the particular benefits of converting to DITA, with structured authoring making content reuse an achievable goal. However, among the 12 companies, only two were leveraging content reuse in any significant way by the end of their implementation phase. And both of these took the additional steps of planning an extensive content rewriting phase before implementation began.

All of our companies managed successful implementations that ran from two to five years (and a few mentioned that implementation doesn’t really end, it continues to evolve.) All went through pilots of varying lengths and complexity. In hindsight, most found that they should have planned for simpler pilots, and built in time to experiment with various pieces of the workflow. They all recognized that additional data cleanup, particularly cleanup based on what they uncovered during pilots would have made their conversions go even more smoothly.

Their staffs not only needed time to adjust to a radically different writing approach—highly modularized, very collaborative, and more focused on adhering to guidelines—but also the time to look at ways to make the processes fit the unique needs of their companies and their teams. Almost unanimously, they all pointed out a need for more and earlier training in structured writing and the DITA standard. Interestingly, they also commented on the need for more management support of their DITA projects.

As we work with more and more clients looking to better leverage their content assets through implementing DITA, we consistently make a few key recommendations when it comes to the people aspects of the initiative:

• Have a champion from outside the content team to provide visible and ongoing support during the implementation.

  
  

• Invest heavily in training the content team, and start early in the process to help them get comfortable with the concepts underlying DITA, as well as the methodologies you will employ.

  
  

• Plan smaller, simplified pilots to uncover idiosyncrasies in your existing processes and legacy content and develop methods for handling them.

  
  

• Use the lessons learned from the pilot to adjust workflows and processes, and engage the content team throughout.

  
  

• Plan for an extensive inventory and analysis of your legacy content. Then carefully consider, and prioritize, the content that should be rewritten completely, and what requires some modification to fit a structured model.

  
  

Working within the DITA standard represents a huge change for your company, so it’s critical to plan carefully and thoroughly, and to invest the time and resources in the people who will make it happen.