the state of structure, 2011
DESCRIPTION
In this webcast, Sarah O’Keefe discusses the results of Scriptorium’s 2011 survey on structured authoring. Topics include adoption rates, tools, implementation costs, lessons learned, and much more.TRANSCRIPT
The State of Structure2011
Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing
background imageflickr: thelastminute
Monday, May 9, 2011
Housekeeping notes
❖ 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.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Sarah O’Keefe
❖ Founder and president, Scriptorium Publishing
❖ Content strategy fortech comm
❖ Interested in collision ofcontent, publishing, andtechnology
Monday, May 9, 2011
About our data
❖ Survey conducted via web (surveymonkey.com)
❖ January and February 2011
❖ Recruited participants through direct email, Twitter, blog posts, and word of mouth
❖ Approximately 200 completed survey
❖ Almost identical to 2009 survey
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Structured authoring is…
❖ A publishing workflow that lets you define and automatically enforce consistent organization of information; implementations are generally based on Extensible Markup Language (XML)
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Poll: Predict the results!
❖ “Have you implemented structured authoring, or do you plan to do so?”
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The answer: 42%
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2009 comparison
❖ Have implemented
❖ 2009: 29%
❖ 2011: 42%
❖ Undecided
❖ 2009: 21%
❖ 2011: 10%
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Predict the results:Why structure?❖ Choose the most important reason for
moving to structure.
❖ Original survey included compliance and personalization, but those were the bottom two choices.
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Why structure?
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DITA, DITA, DITA
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Predict the results: Why not structure?
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The case against structured authoring…
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Lack of value
❖ “Doesn’t make sense in a single-author environment.”
❖ “The payoff just isn’t there.”
❖ “No compelling benefits…”
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Fear of change
❖ “Too much change…”
❖ “Not even thinking inside the box, let alone outside”
❖ “Not sure how it will impact us.”
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Achieving goals
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Other goals
❖ “Automated daily publishing”
❖ “Reduction of total content”
❖ “Step toward separating content from presentation”
❖ “Short time to provide more languages”
❖ “Easier workflow
❖ “Rebranding, variants”
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Implementation cost
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DITA: Free but not cheap
❖ 2009 result: $106,000
❖ 2011 result: $124,500
❖ 2011 non-DITA: $69,000
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Rampant speculation
❖ More CMS = more cost
❖ More realistic about costs?
❖ Reuse requires CMS?
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DITA cost factors (not from survey data)❖ Specialization
❖ Complex output requirements, especially PDF
❖ Legacy documentation conversion
❖ Content management systems implementation
❖ Large number of contributors
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Authoring tools
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DITA authoring tools
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Content management
❖ “What CMS do you (or will you) use?”
❖ 33–34%: Do not use
❖ Other responses: Astoria, Author-it, Contenta, Docato, Documentum, IXIASOFT, Schema ST4, SharePoint, SiberLogic, Subversion, TIM-RS, Trisoft, Vasont, XDocs, and many, many more.
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Content management, DITA users❖ Past implementers:
❖ 50%: Do not use a CMS
❖ Leaders: Astoria, Vasont, IXIASOFT, XDocs
❖ Current implementers:
❖ 36%: Do not use a CMS
❖ Leaders: Astoria, SharePoint, Trisoft
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Increasing concern about change
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Mistakes were made
❖ “Not realizing the scope of the effort.”
❖ “Not planning for CMS integration.”
❖ “Lack of testing.”
❖ “Involving the marketing department.”
❖ “Implementing in a live production environment with the wrong tools, which were still being decided upon during live project development. Disaster!”
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More mistakes…
❖ “Trying to use inexperienced offshore labor to do conversion/editing/development.”
❖ “Not using a vendor to convert our legacy documentation.”
❖ “Too little time reserved for conversion.”
❖ “Insufficient imposition of consistency in styles before conversion to DITA. Insufficient imposition of consistency in procedures before conversion to DITA.”
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Themes
❖ Document conversion a huge problem.
❖ Project complexity much higher than anticipated.
❖ Many complaints about “the wrong CMS.”
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Biggest surprises
❖ “General immaturity of many products in the XML/DITA space.”
❖ “The lack of excitement and initiative shown by DITA authors.”
❖ “The lack of enthusiasm among management.”
❖ “Major reduction of translation costs, over 50%.”
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Surprises…
❖ “One author never really understood topics.”
❖ “Productivity increased from 800 pages per writer per year to 3200+ pages per writer per year.”
❖ “Excessive amount of time spent using structured tools to enter content. Productivity has been reduced by an average of 40 percent.”
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More quotes
❖ “People have responded very positively to our new and improved documentation, when we didn't expect that many people to notice or to take the time to respond.”
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Themes
❖ Issues with tools
❖ Lack of maturity
❖ Difficult to use
❖ Change resistance…or not
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Final notes
❖ scriptorium.com/resources/webcasts for the webcast recording in a day or two
❖ Check scriptorium.com/events for upcoming events
Monday, May 9, 2011
Questions and answers
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