DITA Overview – Build the case for DITA

Overview Understand your business objectives Realize your problem statements Understand the most important thing Know the DITA benefits Learn DITA basics Realize the DITA gotchas Consider the vision How you can make a difference

Understand your business objectives Get a corporate sponsor Find out what your business objectives are Marry the business objectives to your content objectives Work with a team and not in a silo

Total user experience (UX) What’s your total user experience? What team’s play a part in your user experience? Provides UI design based on in-depth user research. Designs are tested with target users early and often throughout the development lifecycle, thus ensuring that the finished product meets users' needs. User Experience Design Documentation Training Provides a research-based, structured curriculum delivered through interactive, just-in-time methods, with a focus on eLearning and virtual classroom delivery. Provides non-intrusive but easily accessible product assistance based on in-depth research of how users interact with the products and the contexts in which they seek additional information.

Problem statements (Questions to ask) What tools are your teams using and what are the outputs they are producing? Can your teams single-source their content? Do they store it all in one place? Do your teams store content all in the same format? Do your teams use all the same styles, standards, and branding? (Unified content?) How fast is your content repository growing? Can you sustain it?

Common Tools Common Styles Quality Content Common Repository Most important thing Common Tools Common Styles Consistent Content Common Repository Quality Content Confidential

Why select DITA? Meets all of your business objectives Enterprise standard that is independent of proprietary tools Provides content reuse Provides content exchange Enforces consistent content types and organization Permits metadata usage Produces content in a cost-effective way Provides automated formatting and publishing Prepares content for translation Extensible which means teams can be proactive and not reactive

DITA benefits everyone Benefits to Customers Consistent content across product lines Unified look and feel for all of our outputs Easily searchable content and less content to weed through Improved content quality Enables content translation if the business adopts translation More efficiency Better control over content versions Unified content storage repository Automated publishing and workflows   Corporate/Management benefits Better skill set definition Greater output flexibility Lower personnel, software, production, storage, support, and maintenance costs on the go forward Benefits to content creators New industry standard skills and software to learn More time writing – quality content Professional and personal growth

DITA basics

DITA overview - DITA vs DITA Open Toolkit (OT) DITA is an acronym for Darwin Information Typing Architecture DITA is an XML-based standard for authoring and delivering information DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented content that can be reused and single-sourced DITA is not a static standard. It continues to evolve and improve. When DITA became a public XML standard in 2004, IBM contributed the DITA OT. The DITA OT transforms DITA content (XML files) into output formats such as PDF, XHTML, and Windows online help (CHM files). It is a publishing Engine. DITA XML Standard for Writing Content DITA OT Publishing Engine Donated by IBM

Complete tools solution includes Content Migration Tool Authoring Tool, such as XMetal or oXygen CCMS (Content Repository) Styles Enforcement Publishing Engine, such as DITA OT) Interactive Online Repository

DITA key concepts Generic Topic Three additional topic types based on the Generic Topic – Concept, Task, and Reference Each topic consists of tags Topics Author content in topics Dita map Book map Dita maps (think of it as the table of contents file)

DITA key concepts – structure in the content Structure – Hierarchical order in which content occurs in a topic The more consistent the structure, the easier it is for users to read/use and the easier it is for writers to write Structured content allows you to collaborate, share, and exchange content Common Issues for Enterprises Teams using different structures and structures have no governance Managers want you to focus on quality content rather than trying to remember the structure, the layout/formatting details, and publishing the output

DITA gotchas You need to put guidelines/best practices around specific things that will give you a headache. Content reuse Versioning topics Branching topics Conditional text Variables Goal: Keep it simple. You could do many nifty things, but that does not mean these things are sensible, logical, or advisable. Horror Stories… There are plenty. Don’t over think your solution.

Consider the vision Place focus on quality content Have greater control over the user experience destiny Give writers/trainers higher visibility so you become partners with other areas of your organization Become proactive towards business objectives and customer requests rather than reactive Contribute and/or increase the revenue that writers/trainers generate for the business

How you can make a difference Speak up and become a part of the effort Do not be a bystander Collaborate with your peers and your team Tout our your effort and its progress with metrics

Key takeaways Understand your business objectives Realize your problem statements Understand the most important thing Know the DITA benefits Learn DITA basics Realize the DITA gotchas Consider the vision How you can make a difference