Sarah O'Keefe of Scriptorium Publishing discusses calculating the return on investment (ROI) for using XML and DITA for topic-based authoring. She provides examples of cost savings from increased localization and content reuse. She also discusses factors that affect implementation costs and the importance of change management.
Polkadot JAM Slides - Token2049 - By Dr. Gavin Wood
Calculating the ROI for XML and DITA topic-based authoring
1. Calculating the ROI for
XML and DITA
Topic-Based Authoring
Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing
background image
flickr: thelastminute
Saturday, October 2, 2010
2. Twitter
❖ Sarah O’Keefe
❖ @sarahokeefe
❖ #lavacon is the conference hashtag
❖ Also consider #techcomm, #dita
Saturday, October 2, 2010
3. Overview
❖ Business case examples (with numbers)
❖ YMMV
❖ IANAL
❖ WYSIOO
❖ Big-picture musings on other issues
(without numbers)
Saturday, October 2, 2010
5. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
7. 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)
Saturday, October 2, 2010
8. Are you copying and
pasting?
❖ Calculate cost of updates in multiple
documents
❖ Consider error rates
❖ Don’t forget the mental health toll
Saturday, October 2, 2010
9. External content reuse
for increased ROI
❖ Software error messages
❖ Product specifications in product
database and datasheets
❖ Product descriptions
❖ Training
❖ Tech support
Saturday, October 2, 2010
10. Non-DITA problems for
content reuse
❖ Improve collaboration among writers
❖ Develop and enforce consistent style
standards
Saturday, October 2, 2010
11. A wise man once told
me…
“You should not implement XML as a
substitute for creating a style guide.”
Saturday, October 2, 2010
12. Also…
“Structure is no substitute for
management.”
Saturday, October 2, 2010
13. ROI depends on team
(dys)function.
Flickr: kevenlaw
Saturday, October 2, 2010
14. A high-functioning team
is a prerequisite to…
❖ Share topics
❖ Communicate updates
❖ Minimize content “ownership” issues
❖ Smooth out inevitable conflicts
❖ Cooperate on assignments
Saturday, October 2, 2010
15. Complex conditional
content may require XML.
Photo: www.christianholmer.com
Saturday, October 2, 2010
16. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
17. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
18. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
19. Assumptions
❖ Tagging work does not change for static
versus dynamic publishing
❖ Programming effort to enable dynamic
publishing included in implementation
cost
Saturday, October 2, 2010
22. Time to market
Flickr: chris_radcliff
Saturday, October 2, 2010
23. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
24. New
publishing
architectures
Flickr: ccharmon
Saturday, October 2, 2010
25. “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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
26. Integrating with user-
generated content
❖ Source content in XML
❖ Transform to accommodate
user-generated content
❖ Use metadata to support unified search
Saturday, October 2, 2010
27. Just-in-time publishing
❖ Topic-based rather than deliverable-
based publishing
❖ Incremental deliveries for localization
❖ Content deliveries decoupled from
software deliveries
Saturday, October 2, 2010
28. Analytics
❖ Measure how topics are used
❖ Act on information about:
❖ Popular topics
❖ Unpopular topics
❖ Unsuccessful searches
❖ Topics with lots of comments
Saturday, October 2, 2010
29. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
30. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
31. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
33. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
34. Dysfunctional teams
❖ Improve communication
❖ Improve collaboration
❖ Build trust
❖ Provide project roadmap early
Saturday, October 2, 2010
35. Information hoarding
❖ Do not reward this behavior
❖ Implicitly
❖ Explicitly
❖ Avoid communication bottlenecks
❖ Document project decisions
❖ Distribute project information
Saturday, October 2, 2010
36. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
37. 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
Saturday, October 2, 2010
38. Match any two for
instant XML justification
Topics 2,000+
Writers 10+
Supported languages 3+
Deliverable formats 2+
flickr: booleansplit
Saturday, October 2, 2010