collaborative authoring in dita
TRANSCRIPT
Collaborative Authoring in DITA, or: How We All Learned to Share
James Hom
Engineering Program Manager
March 2010
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Global Leadership
Broad solutions portfolio
Comprehensive professional services
Global support
Industry-leading partners
135+ offices around the world
~8000 employees
Fortune 1000, S&P 500, NASDAQ 100
$1B
$3B
$4B
$2B
0706050403 08
FY09:$3.5 Billion*
09
* Non-GAAP Revenue
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Extend Efficiencies Everywhere
NetApp® FAS and V-Series
High-End SAN
Low/Midrange SAN
NAS
Disaster Recovery
Archive & Compliance
Backup
Virtualization
Industry Approach
All runData ONTAP
®
Different hardwareDifferent softwareDifferent people
Different processes
Same hardwareSame softwareSame people
Same processes
▪ One platform for all workloads▪ Learn once, deploy everywhere
▪ Improve IT and business efficiency
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Before DITA: Single writer owns one book
1990s technology:– Unstructured
Framemaker & Robohelp
1790s ownership:– One writer, one book– One work of content,
lovingly hand-crafted from start to finish
– Content used only in that book
– Writing groups focused on output formats
Image source: Wikipedia Commons
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With DITA: Share and reuse the work
Now:Interchangeable parts:
“topics”– Multiple authors per deliverable– Content written for any output
format– Content reusable in multiple
deliverables
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Writers own relationships and technologies, not books
Sunnyvale
RTP
Bangalore
Waltham
6
Pittsburgh
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Component CM lets us share work globally: topics written once are used everywhere
Sunnyvale
RTP
Bangalore
7
WalthamPittsburgh
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Writers manage groups of topics with submaps
Sunnyvale
RTP
Bangalore
8
WalthamPittsburgh
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Publication captain builds deliverable using a master map
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Publication Captain
Publication
Deliverable outputsMaster map
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Collaboration requires additional communication between topic owners
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Cross-global, cross-timezone communication via workflow states
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DITA’s structure isn’t enough to ensure reusability
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Writing style and usage DITA style and usage Editors ensure common voice Tools (Author Assistant) as
“Power Style Guide”
Style rules
Conrefs and Variables controlled in libraries
Conditions centrally managed and owned by the “Condition Maven”
Future: controlled vocabulary for translation
Shared constructs
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Team representatives define process and content rules for the organization
Decisions affect the entire organization, so include representatives from each writing group, editors, and tools.
Ensures buy-in and coverage of all issues.
Need agreement otherwise can’t share everywhere.
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The most important thing: Trust
Collaboration at this scale requires a high level of trust in your colleagues.
– Trust that their writing is good enough for your deliverable.
– Trust that they got the technical details right.
– Trust that they got the content edited and reviewed and fixed any errors.
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Questions?