Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA topic-based authoring

Calculating the ROI for
XML and DITA
Topic-Based Authoring

Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing

background image
ﬂickr: thelastminute

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Twitter
❖ Sarah O’Keefe
❖ @sarahokeefe
❖ #lavacon is the conference hashtag
❖ Also consider #techcomm, #dita


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


Localization provides an
easy cost justiﬁcation.
Flickr: iancarroll

Localization cost
❖ 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


Increased content reuse
Flickr: a-m-photo

Content reuse
❖ 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)

Are you copying and
pasting?
❖ Calculate cost of updates in multiple
documents
❖ Consider error rates
❖ Don’t forget the mental health toll


External content reuse
for increased ROI
❖ Software error messages
❖ Product speciﬁcations in product
database and datasheets
❖ Product descriptions
❖ Training
❖ Tech support


Non-DITA problems for
content reuse
❖ Improve collaboration among writers
❖ Develop and enforce consistent style
standards


A wise man once told
me…
“You should not implement XML as a
substitute for creating a style guide.”


Also…
“Structure is no substitute for
management.”


ROI depends on team
(dys)function.
Flickr: kevenlaw

A high-functioning team
is a prerequisite to…
❖ Share topics
❖ Communicate updates
❖ Minimize content “ownership” issues
❖ Smooth out inevitable conﬂicts
❖ Cooperate on assignments


Complex conditional
content may require XML.
Photo: www.christianholmer.com

XML can help with…
❖ Multiple conditional dimensions
(platform, customer, audience, product)
❖ Huge number of possible variations
❖ Dynamic versioning instead of static
publishing of a limited number of
variations


Quality justiﬁcation for
complex conditional text
❖ Eliminate redundancy
❖ More targeted information
❖ Meet customer requirement for
personalized documentation
❖ Enable more versioning than supported
in current toolset
❖ Enable dynamic publishing


Complex conditional
example
❖ 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


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


Complex conditions
require careful design.
Photo: Rachel Houghton

Yesterday’s content…
ﬂickr: uhop

Time to market
Flickr: chris_radcliff

Time to market
❖ 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


New
publishing
architectures

Flickr: ccharmon

“One of the great
powers of XML is to
free information
from being merely
text on a page, and David Kelly
Senior Technical Consultant

to give it other
kinds of roles.”

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

Integrating with user-
generated content
❖ Source content in XML
❖ Transform to accommodate
user-generated content
❖ Use metadata to support uniﬁed search


Just-in-time publishing
❖ Topic-based rather than deliverable-
based publishing
❖ Incremental deliveries for localization
❖ Content deliveries decoupled from
software deliveries


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


DITA implementation
cost averages $106K.
❖ Source: “The state of structure in
technical communication,” 2009.
www.scriptorium.com/blog/2010/05/
the-state-of-structure-in-technical-
communication.html


Your business case needs
to show more than $106K.
❖ Localization
❖ Increased reuse
❖ Support for complex conditionality
❖ Faster time to market
❖ Support for new publishing architecture


Factors that increase
implementation cost
❖ Software integration issues
❖ Complex output/formatting requirements
❖ Inconsistent source ﬁles
❖ Source ﬁles that are not topic-based
❖ Content management system
❖ People


Change management is
critical

A few of my (not) favorite
things
❖ Dysfunctional teams
❖ Information hoarding during
implementation
❖ Tool-speciﬁc blinders
❖ Using XML/DITA to clone an existing,
problematic workﬂow


Dysfunctional teams
❖ Improve communication
❖ Improve collaboration
❖ Build trust
❖ Provide project roadmap early


Information hoarding
❖ Do not reward this behavior
❖ Implicitly
❖ Explicitly
❖ Avoid communication bottlenecks
❖ Document project decisions
❖ Distribute project information


Tool-speciﬁc view of the
world
❖ Ask for open minds
❖ Consider new features, not just cloning
old features
❖ Try out a variety of XML tools


Cloning an existing
workflow
❖ 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


Match any two for
instant XML justiﬁcation
Topics 2,000+
Writers 10+
Supported languages 3+
Deliverable formats 2+

ﬂickr: booleansplit

Questions? Comments?


Contact information
❖ Sarah O’Keefe
❖ www.scriptorium.com
❖ okeefe@scriptorium.com
❖ @sarahokeefe


Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA topic-based authoring

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Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA topic-based authoring