RE: [dita-adoption] Improving DITA OT documentation to speed up DITA adoption

["Steffen Frederiksen" <srf@dita-exchange.com>]

Hi Mathew,

 

First of all, I think you have done a great piece of work!

 

When reviewing your materials, it became clear to me that the documentation you are working on are not “only” about the DITA OT – but more broadly about the DITA standard too. This makes perfect sense to me and it also makes me wonder if the task audience analysis should be expanded a bit.

 

Specifically, I would like to suggest that you (and everybody else taking part in this discussion) think about one or more of these five additional roles:

·         Systems integrator/IT:

o   Responsible for integrating the open toolkit into existing (CMS) solutions

o   Responsible for designing a GUI interface to the OT

o   Requires “API” type information about the OT

·         Content reviewer:

o   SME with no XML skills, no DITA skills

o   Requires basic understanding of DITA architecture (no tags)

·         Content provider:

o   SME that creates the basic input for the documentation process

o   Basic understanding of topic types and overall DITA architecture and processes

o   No XML, no tags

·         Content re-user:

o   Any knowledge worker in the organization that create ad-hoc, transient documents, presentations, spreadsheets, emails where DITA topics can be reused

o   Require a basic understanding of the DITA information architecture

·         Business manager:

o   Decision to implement DITA, result responsibilities

o   Calculating ROI

o   Measuring results (time spent, translation costs, % reuse)

 

Speaking for myself, I do have a tendency to forget that documentation is neither born in the tech. doc. department nor actually consumed there. A lot of other people in a company are involved, one way or the other….

 

 

Best Regards,

>< Content Technologies ApS

Steffen Frederiksen

Director
Katrinebjerg Science Park

Aabogade 15

DK-8200 Aarhus N

 

Mobile: +45-5155-3005
Fax: +45-6980-3578

srf@dita-exchange.com

www.dita-exchange.com

 

 

 

 

From: Steffen Frederiksen [mailto:srf@dita-exchange.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 21:50
To: mathew varghese; dita-adoption@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [dita-adoption] Improving DITA OT documentation to speed up DITA adoption

 

Excellent initiative Mathew! I will give you feedback next week,

 

Best regards,

 

Steffen

 

From: mathew varghese [mailto:mathew.techwriter@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 19:11
To: dita-adoption@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [dita-adoption] Improving DITA OT documentation to speed up DITA adoption

 

Folks,

I am currently working on creating a documentation suite for DITA OT based on audience and task analysis. From the SWOT
analysis, it is evident that good documentation will help DITA adoption in the long run. I feel that the user guide is very
large is addresses multiple audience types. Given that adoption will largely depend on overwhelming approval by the content
development community, we need a good Getting Started/Evaluation Guide that will ease these people into DITA. I've published my recommendations on the dita-users and the dita.xml.org.

Audience and Task Analysis - http://dita.xml.org/news/audience-and-task-analysis-for-dita-ot-0
Evaluation Guide - http://dita.xml.org/news/evaluation-guide-for-dita-ot

Please review my documents and send me your feedback. I hope to roll out atleast some of these documents with DITA OT 1.5.

Best regards,

Matt