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DITA METRICS IN
PRODUCTION:
How, When, Where, and Why
(and How Much?)
Keith Schengili-Roberts, Manager
Documentation & Localization
June 16, 2011
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION | a.k.a. Who is this Guy?


 Keith Schengili-Roberts
   – Manager for AMD’s Documentation and
     Localization department for the Professional
     Graphics division (formerly ATI); formerly its
     Information Architect (migrated team to DITA)
   – Award-winning lecturer at University of Toronto’s
     Professional Learning Center since 1999,
     teaching courses on information architecture and
     content management
   – Author of four titles on Internet technologies; last
     title was Core CSS, 2nd Edition (2001)
   – Co-Founder of the Semiconductor DITA
     Implementer’s Group (SDIG) that holds monthly
     free talks/webinars on using DITA for our domain:
     http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/semidita
   – DITA blog at: www.ditawriter.com

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WHAT MY GROUP DOES


 Documentation & Localization Group at AMD's Graphics Product Group
  (GPG)
   – Formerly ATI, based in Markham, Ontario
   – 4 writers, 1½ process engineers, 2 localization co-ordinators,
     1 manager
   – CMS: DITA CMS from Ixiasoft (www.ixiasoft.com)
   – Have been using DITA in production for over four years
 Responsible for:
   – End-user documentation, including online help
   – Engineering documentation for ODM/OEM partners
   – Technical training documentation for partners
   – Localize in up to 25 languages (mostly end-user and UI)
   – Primary outputs are PDF and XHTML
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DITA METRICS AND R.O.I.


 Most typical context in which one hears about metrics in relation to DITA:
   – Scenario: documentation team is trying to justify expense of a DITA-
     based Content Management System to upper management. The two
     key costing arguments are:
         Higher re-use rates = more efficient process → faster delivery/lower costs
         Separation of form from content = more efficient work process, greatly
          reduced localization costs


   – If estimated $ R.O.I. > $ CMS and attendant costs, get CMS




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PROVING THE PRODUCTIVITY R.O.I. ARGUMENT


 How?
   – Take metrics before switching over to CMS in order to set a baseline
   – Here are comparative numbers from 2007, covering two quarters
     immediately pre- and post-CMS implementation:




         Demonstrates that using the DITA CMS made us faster, and that we more
          than doubled output (docs were comparable)



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PROVING THE PRODUCTIVITY R.O.I. ARGUMENT (CONT.)


 What’s happened since 2007?




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PROVING THE REDUCED LOCALIZATION COST ARGUMENT


 Track localization budget and compare to actual amount spent; any
  positive difference goes towards R.O.I.




                         “Bad Old Days”                                           CMS ROI
         $


                           Content audit +
                           Single-sourcing



         Blue line = localization budget for year, Red line = actual localization spend


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R.O.I. PROVEN, NOW WHAT?


 In our case the Ixiasoft DITA CMS had demonstratively paid for itself in
  terms of increased efficiency and reduced localization cost by the end of
  the second year
   – Any additional savings from that point on is “gravy”


 Metrics now take on a related but different purpose:
   – Focus is now on relative production and quality using the CMS; or in
     other words:
         “how do we track what we are doing?”
         “how do we do what we do better?”
         “what is the ongoing cost of production?”




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DITA + CMS = ABILITY TO MEASURE OUTPUTS


 DITA CMS has capability to process large amounts of data in its
  repository, so managers can answer the following questions that relate to
  production in a DITA-based environment:
   – What is the average size of a topic?
   – How much content was created?
   – How much does it cost to create a topic?
   – What is the topic reuse rate?
   – What DITA tags are most/least used? Are we using them efficiently?
   – What is the ratio of topic types used?
   – How much of the same document type have we produced year over
     year?




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WHAT NOT TO MEASURE | DITA Makes these More Problematic


 Technical Writing metrics that are of questionable use:
    – Hours of days to produce a page
          What exactly is a “page” in XML?
          Different output formats change outcome (double-spaced output anyone?)


 Documents released per writer
          Differences in size (Datasheets vs. Databooks)
          Documents with high reuse rates vs. low reuse rates


 Measure aggregate values rather than individual effort
    – Otherwise you run the risk of getting more what you measure



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GOOD BACKGROUND MATERIAL ON DOC METRICS


 Pre-DITA, good general overviews:
    – Documentation Metrics: What Do You Really Want to Measure, by
      Donald S. Le Vie Jr. http://www.stc.org/intercom/PDFs/2000/200012_06-
      09.pdf
    – Practical and Effective Metrics, by Geoffrey J.S. Hart
      http://www.stc.org/PDF_Files/myjob/geofferyHart.pdf
 DITA –specific:
    – What is the Best Metric to Measure the Success of Your Reuse of DITA
      Topics? by Bill Hackos
      http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200806/third.htm
    – DITA Metrics: Cost Metrics, by Mark A. Lewis
      http://dita.xml.org/resource/dita-metrics-cost-metrics (look for PDF link)
    – The Illusive, Writing Productivity Metric: Making Unit Cost a Competitive
      Advantage, by Mike Eleder (“Best Practices”, Feb 2011)

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DITA TOPICS AS “ATOMIC” UNIT OF MEASURE


 Each DITA topic can be thought of
  an “atomic” unit of production; while
  they vary in size, that difference can
  be measured and averaged in a
  meaningful way
    – Different topic types have their
      own characteristics; graph shows
      average, max, min, and count for
      concepts, references and tasks
      in our repository
    – References average = 2.6 pages
      of lorem ipsum text in MS Word;
      are roughly twice the size of
      concepts and tasks



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ONE EXAMPLE: TOPIC PRODUCTION PER QUARTER


 Tracked items:
    – # of topics created per author
    – # of topics modified per author
 Results then collated, showing amount of work being done in DITA CMS




 Sample search:
 Authoring cycle selected (current work),
 All document types selected                                                             Select a date range for topic
                                                                                         creation, then select a person
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TOPIC PRODUCTION PER QUARTER | One View of the
Resulting Data

 Collated results show all topic production over a quarter




  # of Topics




    – Results show ongoing work necessary to meet product release cycle
          An effective tool with upper management; shows productivity and
           predicted trends based on previous cycles
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TOPIC PRODUCTION PER QUARTER | Another View of the
Resulting Data

 Can further break this down to show how much groups are contributing:




  # of Topics




    – Same total, but this shows relative contribution per group
          Uses document type/author to group topic outputs

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COST-PER-TOPIC | Identifying the cost of production


 Idea came from “Best Practices” article by Mike Eleder (“The Illusive,
  Writing Productivity Metric: Making Unit Cost a Competitive Advantage”)
 Basically:
                                cost per topic = monthly tech writer team cost
                                                                        topics produced monthly
 Is a unit cost measure, producing monthly average cost for producing
  topics
    – Can estimate the cost of future work based on result
    – Original article suggests using only published topics; I use topics
      created + modified (i.e. using the same figures used in previous two
      charts) as those numbers are effectively normalized and better reflect
      ongoing work



16 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
COST-PER-TOPIC | Example chart




$




 Initial version doesn’t provide a clear picture; cost varies based on
  production figures (dips in August of both years represent busy times:
  more topics created in a given timeframe = lower cost per topic)
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COST-PER-TOPIC | Example chart with trend line added




$




 The trend line records the average cost-per-topic over the time measured
 This shows an overall downward trend: Avg $28 per topic in 2009, and $25                           per
  topic in 2010
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COST-PER-TOPIC | Example chart based on published data




   $




 This graph shows what is published (i.e. what goes out the door) each month;
  release cycle is more variable than our production schedule; it does show costs of
  publishing content (High = $81.60, Low = $6.61, Avg = $17.79)
 Previous topics created/modified charts provide a more accurate result as it
  reflects producing topic content as a running cost
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COST-PER-LOCALIZED-TOPIC | Example chart




   $




 This looks at the cost per localized topic; compares total localized topics produced against
  actual localization costs invoiced for that month
 Invoicing cycles don’t always match our localization cycles, so same caveat applies here as
  with published doc
 Removing outliers, results are interesting: High = $28.15, Min = $0.02, Avg = $5.25
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REUSE RATES | What to Measure?


 On the surface, this seems like a simple question to answer: if a topic is
  used again, that equals 100% reuse, doesn’t it?
    – True, but that’s not the whole picture; topics are often copied (cloned)
      and then only a small portion of the new topic is changed (a sentence is
      added, a numerical value is changed, etc)
    – So to get a true value for reuse, you need to go past the topic level


 Localization tools provides us with a usable option: segments




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SEGMENTS AS “QUARKS” OF MEASUREMENT FOR REUSE


 If topics are the “atomic” unit of production measurement,
  then segments are “sub-atomic”
    – Topic reuse can take place at the whole topic level, but
      more often it happens sub-topic level, as topics are copied and then
      modified
    – Segmentation is a concept from the localization realm: a segment is a
      sentence or (more usually) a portion of a sentence
          Defined by segmentation rules, which ensures that you are always comparing
           like to like
          Localization tools look for changes (the “delta”) at this level
    – Data within our CMS enables us to do a look at this
    – If you don’t have a CMS, try a localization workbench




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SAMPLE OF SEGMENTATION AS APPLIED TO REUSE




%                                                                                                    # of
                                                                                                     topics




             Average monthly topic reuse rate for this time period = 53.53%
23 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
OTHER QUESTIONS RELATED TO PRODUCTIVITY
IMPROVEMENTS

 Constraints added to DITA 1.2 spec allow you to limit the number of tags
  you use
    – This is useful, because it helps enforce a “house style” of DITA usage,
      where authors can more readily find the tags that they need to use
    – But how do you usefully determine what you should and should not
      keep?
          If you have an existing base of content, examine how often tags are used and
           then set a threshold below which tags are excluded




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WORDCLOUD SHOWING RELATIVE TAG USAGE




          Produced by doing a search on the frequency of use of each DITA tag (e.g. #
           of times <note> is used in all topics) in our repository, and then using a
           WordCloud app (wordle.com) to produce the results
          In this case it is not the “big” words in which we are interested, but the
           smallest, which ought to be excluded from ongoing use
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EXAMINING THE OUTLIERS


                                                                                      In this case we are looking at the
                                                                                       tags that are the least used
                                                                                          – These are candidates for
                                                                                            exclusion in the constraint file
                                                                                          – This type of search does not
                                                                                            reveal tags with a count = 0;
                                                                                            these would need to be
                                                                                            identified and excluded as well
                                                                                               Note that at 73 tags total, we are
                                                                                                using well under half all DITA
                                                                                                tags available
                                                                                               Based on final results, an
                                                                                                effective DITA 1.2 constraint can
                                                                                                be created



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TRACKING TOPIC TYPE USAGE | Tracking History


 Year-over-year comparisons of topic types used provides an idea as to
  the composition of a “typical” DITA-based document




    – While I expected a high percentage of reference topics, I wondered
      whether there were more topics that ought to be tasks which were
      instead done as references
27 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
TRACKING TOPIC TYPE USAGE | Making Change


 Asked writers to be more diligent
  about writing task topics where
  they might be temped to write
  them as references instead
    – Result was a measurable
      increase in the percentage of
      task topics created over the
      course of the year
    – A larger number of our
      documents now include a
      procedural, step-by-step
      approach to the subject, which
      is beneficial to the end-user




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COMPARING LIKE PRODUCTION YEAR OVER YEAR


 Comparing the number of datasheets vs. databooks not useful, but
  comparing how many of those are made over several years is
    – Provides insight into relative production efficiency




                                                                                                     # of docs
                                                                                                     produced
                                                                                                     per year




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LOOKING MORE CLOSELY AT YEARLY PRODUCTION


 This was created by outputting a list of all maps published within the year,
  and then manually sorting them by type of publication




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BREAKING PRODUCTION NUMBERS DOWN FURTHER




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PRODUCTION AND LOCALIZATION NUMBERS


 Following was produced by outputting a list of all non-English maps
  created within the year, and then sorting (and counting) by language




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COMPARING ENGLISH TO LOCALIZED PUBLISHED MAPS


 A year-over-year comparison of published map output




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OTHER POSSIBILITIES | Looking at Quality


 Another avenue we are looking at is automated quality metrics
    – Are actively investigating the Flesch Reading Ease metric
          It follows a simple formula, which could be applied to the content of any topic
          We do a lot of engineering documentation, so low scores (indicating words
           using many syllables aimed at those with more than a basic education) is
           expected
          However, topics containing basic information that score especially high (such
           as most concepts) may serve as a guide to the writer to re-examine a topic to
           make it easier to read




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OTHER POSSIBILITIES | Localization


There are further gains to be had on the localization side:
 Ixiasoft (DITA CMS) and XML Int’l (XTM Suite) have integrated the CMS
  with a translation memory (TM) suite that will allow us to use TM within
  CMS
    – Currently use segmentation matching, producing 100% matches that still need
      to be verified (i.e. 100% matches which still need to be verified); with integrated
      TM, only new content will be sent to localization vendor.




35 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
SLIGHT TANGENT #1: CREATING A DITA STYLE GUIDE


 A recommendation for any tech docs group that uses DITA extensively:
    – Helps new writers/contributors come up to speed
    – Usefully narrows the scope of the XSL work that needs to be done
    – Many things are “legal” in DITA but may be poor from a “house style”
      standpoint, for example:
          Can have unformatted block content between a header and a table in a
           section
          Tables and figures do not have to have a title
          Can have unlimited nested lists
          Alpha lists can contain more than 26 items
          Lists can contain only a single item




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SCHEMATRON CAN HELP ENFORCE DITA STYLE


 What is Schematron? “Schematron is a rule-based validation language for
  making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in XML
  trees.” (Wikipedia)
 We use Schematron to point out to the writers potential errors/lapses in
  our DITA House Style:
 Text between a section and table not wrapped in block tags:




 A list ought to have more than one item:




37 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
XSL CAN ALSO HELP ENFORCE DITA HOUSE STYLE


 We have a DITA house style that says nested lists should be no more
  than two levels deep.
 Here’s Schematron doing it’s job:




 And here is the result if you try to output it:




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SLIGHT TANGENT #2:
AUTOMATION EFFORTS
General rule: if a process can be
automated, do so.
We have a dedicated programmer who
builds tools and automation processes for
our group.
Sample tools built include:
 “Table-izer”, app that creates DITA XML
table from clipboard
 Automated T.O.C.
 DITA Topic Editor, a tag-less editor
aimed at SMEs
 Automated index based from a list of
keywords
 Change-bar mechanism that diffs output
 Dynamic trademark attribution

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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS




40 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
Trademark Attribution

AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. in the United States
and/or other jurisdictions. Other names used in this presentation are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of
their respective owners.

©2011 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved.




41 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public

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Dita Metrics in Production: How, When, Where, and Why (and How Much) Redux

  • 1. DITA METRICS IN PRODUCTION: How, When, Where, and Why (and How Much?) Keith Schengili-Roberts, Manager Documentation & Localization June 16, 2011
  • 2. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION | a.k.a. Who is this Guy?  Keith Schengili-Roberts – Manager for AMD’s Documentation and Localization department for the Professional Graphics division (formerly ATI); formerly its Information Architect (migrated team to DITA) – Award-winning lecturer at University of Toronto’s Professional Learning Center since 1999, teaching courses on information architecture and content management – Author of four titles on Internet technologies; last title was Core CSS, 2nd Edition (2001) – Co-Founder of the Semiconductor DITA Implementer’s Group (SDIG) that holds monthly free talks/webinars on using DITA for our domain: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/semidita – DITA blog at: www.ditawriter.com 2 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 3. WHAT MY GROUP DOES  Documentation & Localization Group at AMD's Graphics Product Group (GPG) – Formerly ATI, based in Markham, Ontario – 4 writers, 1½ process engineers, 2 localization co-ordinators, 1 manager – CMS: DITA CMS from Ixiasoft (www.ixiasoft.com) – Have been using DITA in production for over four years  Responsible for: – End-user documentation, including online help – Engineering documentation for ODM/OEM partners – Technical training documentation for partners – Localize in up to 25 languages (mostly end-user and UI) – Primary outputs are PDF and XHTML 3 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 4. DITA METRICS AND R.O.I.  Most typical context in which one hears about metrics in relation to DITA: – Scenario: documentation team is trying to justify expense of a DITA- based Content Management System to upper management. The two key costing arguments are:  Higher re-use rates = more efficient process → faster delivery/lower costs  Separation of form from content = more efficient work process, greatly reduced localization costs – If estimated $ R.O.I. > $ CMS and attendant costs, get CMS 4 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 5. PROVING THE PRODUCTIVITY R.O.I. ARGUMENT  How? – Take metrics before switching over to CMS in order to set a baseline – Here are comparative numbers from 2007, covering two quarters immediately pre- and post-CMS implementation:  Demonstrates that using the DITA CMS made us faster, and that we more than doubled output (docs were comparable) 5 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 6. PROVING THE PRODUCTIVITY R.O.I. ARGUMENT (CONT.)  What’s happened since 2007? 6 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 7. PROVING THE REDUCED LOCALIZATION COST ARGUMENT  Track localization budget and compare to actual amount spent; any positive difference goes towards R.O.I. “Bad Old Days” CMS ROI $ Content audit + Single-sourcing  Blue line = localization budget for year, Red line = actual localization spend 7 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 8. R.O.I. PROVEN, NOW WHAT?  In our case the Ixiasoft DITA CMS had demonstratively paid for itself in terms of increased efficiency and reduced localization cost by the end of the second year – Any additional savings from that point on is “gravy”  Metrics now take on a related but different purpose: – Focus is now on relative production and quality using the CMS; or in other words:  “how do we track what we are doing?”  “how do we do what we do better?”  “what is the ongoing cost of production?” 8 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 9. DITA + CMS = ABILITY TO MEASURE OUTPUTS  DITA CMS has capability to process large amounts of data in its repository, so managers can answer the following questions that relate to production in a DITA-based environment: – What is the average size of a topic? – How much content was created? – How much does it cost to create a topic? – What is the topic reuse rate? – What DITA tags are most/least used? Are we using them efficiently? – What is the ratio of topic types used? – How much of the same document type have we produced year over year? 9 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 10. WHAT NOT TO MEASURE | DITA Makes these More Problematic  Technical Writing metrics that are of questionable use: – Hours of days to produce a page  What exactly is a “page” in XML?  Different output formats change outcome (double-spaced output anyone?)  Documents released per writer  Differences in size (Datasheets vs. Databooks)  Documents with high reuse rates vs. low reuse rates  Measure aggregate values rather than individual effort – Otherwise you run the risk of getting more what you measure 10 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 11. GOOD BACKGROUND MATERIAL ON DOC METRICS  Pre-DITA, good general overviews: – Documentation Metrics: What Do You Really Want to Measure, by Donald S. Le Vie Jr. http://www.stc.org/intercom/PDFs/2000/200012_06- 09.pdf – Practical and Effective Metrics, by Geoffrey J.S. Hart http://www.stc.org/PDF_Files/myjob/geofferyHart.pdf  DITA –specific: – What is the Best Metric to Measure the Success of Your Reuse of DITA Topics? by Bill Hackos http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200806/third.htm – DITA Metrics: Cost Metrics, by Mark A. Lewis http://dita.xml.org/resource/dita-metrics-cost-metrics (look for PDF link) – The Illusive, Writing Productivity Metric: Making Unit Cost a Competitive Advantage, by Mike Eleder (“Best Practices”, Feb 2011) 11 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 12. DITA TOPICS AS “ATOMIC” UNIT OF MEASURE  Each DITA topic can be thought of an “atomic” unit of production; while they vary in size, that difference can be measured and averaged in a meaningful way – Different topic types have their own characteristics; graph shows average, max, min, and count for concepts, references and tasks in our repository – References average = 2.6 pages of lorem ipsum text in MS Word; are roughly twice the size of concepts and tasks 12 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 13. ONE EXAMPLE: TOPIC PRODUCTION PER QUARTER  Tracked items: – # of topics created per author – # of topics modified per author  Results then collated, showing amount of work being done in DITA CMS Sample search: Authoring cycle selected (current work), All document types selected Select a date range for topic creation, then select a person 13 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 14. TOPIC PRODUCTION PER QUARTER | One View of the Resulting Data  Collated results show all topic production over a quarter # of Topics – Results show ongoing work necessary to meet product release cycle  An effective tool with upper management; shows productivity and predicted trends based on previous cycles 14 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 15. TOPIC PRODUCTION PER QUARTER | Another View of the Resulting Data  Can further break this down to show how much groups are contributing: # of Topics – Same total, but this shows relative contribution per group  Uses document type/author to group topic outputs 15 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 16. COST-PER-TOPIC | Identifying the cost of production  Idea came from “Best Practices” article by Mike Eleder (“The Illusive, Writing Productivity Metric: Making Unit Cost a Competitive Advantage”)  Basically: cost per topic = monthly tech writer team cost topics produced monthly  Is a unit cost measure, producing monthly average cost for producing topics – Can estimate the cost of future work based on result – Original article suggests using only published topics; I use topics created + modified (i.e. using the same figures used in previous two charts) as those numbers are effectively normalized and better reflect ongoing work 16 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 17. COST-PER-TOPIC | Example chart $  Initial version doesn’t provide a clear picture; cost varies based on production figures (dips in August of both years represent busy times: more topics created in a given timeframe = lower cost per topic) 17 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 18. COST-PER-TOPIC | Example chart with trend line added $  The trend line records the average cost-per-topic over the time measured  This shows an overall downward trend: Avg $28 per topic in 2009, and $25 per topic in 2010 18 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 19. COST-PER-TOPIC | Example chart based on published data $  This graph shows what is published (i.e. what goes out the door) each month; release cycle is more variable than our production schedule; it does show costs of publishing content (High = $81.60, Low = $6.61, Avg = $17.79)  Previous topics created/modified charts provide a more accurate result as it reflects producing topic content as a running cost 19 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 20. COST-PER-LOCALIZED-TOPIC | Example chart $  This looks at the cost per localized topic; compares total localized topics produced against actual localization costs invoiced for that month  Invoicing cycles don’t always match our localization cycles, so same caveat applies here as with published doc  Removing outliers, results are interesting: High = $28.15, Min = $0.02, Avg = $5.25 20 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 21. REUSE RATES | What to Measure?  On the surface, this seems like a simple question to answer: if a topic is used again, that equals 100% reuse, doesn’t it? – True, but that’s not the whole picture; topics are often copied (cloned) and then only a small portion of the new topic is changed (a sentence is added, a numerical value is changed, etc) – So to get a true value for reuse, you need to go past the topic level  Localization tools provides us with a usable option: segments 21 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 22. SEGMENTS AS “QUARKS” OF MEASUREMENT FOR REUSE  If topics are the “atomic” unit of production measurement, then segments are “sub-atomic” – Topic reuse can take place at the whole topic level, but more often it happens sub-topic level, as topics are copied and then modified – Segmentation is a concept from the localization realm: a segment is a sentence or (more usually) a portion of a sentence  Defined by segmentation rules, which ensures that you are always comparing like to like  Localization tools look for changes (the “delta”) at this level – Data within our CMS enables us to do a look at this – If you don’t have a CMS, try a localization workbench 22 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 23. SAMPLE OF SEGMENTATION AS APPLIED TO REUSE % # of topics Average monthly topic reuse rate for this time period = 53.53% 23 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 24. OTHER QUESTIONS RELATED TO PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENTS  Constraints added to DITA 1.2 spec allow you to limit the number of tags you use – This is useful, because it helps enforce a “house style” of DITA usage, where authors can more readily find the tags that they need to use – But how do you usefully determine what you should and should not keep?  If you have an existing base of content, examine how often tags are used and then set a threshold below which tags are excluded 24 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 25. WORDCLOUD SHOWING RELATIVE TAG USAGE  Produced by doing a search on the frequency of use of each DITA tag (e.g. # of times <note> is used in all topics) in our repository, and then using a WordCloud app (wordle.com) to produce the results  In this case it is not the “big” words in which we are interested, but the smallest, which ought to be excluded from ongoing use 25 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 26. EXAMINING THE OUTLIERS  In this case we are looking at the tags that are the least used – These are candidates for exclusion in the constraint file – This type of search does not reveal tags with a count = 0; these would need to be identified and excluded as well  Note that at 73 tags total, we are using well under half all DITA tags available  Based on final results, an effective DITA 1.2 constraint can be created 26 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 27. TRACKING TOPIC TYPE USAGE | Tracking History  Year-over-year comparisons of topic types used provides an idea as to the composition of a “typical” DITA-based document – While I expected a high percentage of reference topics, I wondered whether there were more topics that ought to be tasks which were instead done as references 27 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 28. TRACKING TOPIC TYPE USAGE | Making Change  Asked writers to be more diligent about writing task topics where they might be temped to write them as references instead – Result was a measurable increase in the percentage of task topics created over the course of the year – A larger number of our documents now include a procedural, step-by-step approach to the subject, which is beneficial to the end-user 28 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 29. COMPARING LIKE PRODUCTION YEAR OVER YEAR  Comparing the number of datasheets vs. databooks not useful, but comparing how many of those are made over several years is – Provides insight into relative production efficiency # of docs produced per year 29 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 30. LOOKING MORE CLOSELY AT YEARLY PRODUCTION  This was created by outputting a list of all maps published within the year, and then manually sorting them by type of publication 30 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 31. BREAKING PRODUCTION NUMBERS DOWN FURTHER 31 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 32. PRODUCTION AND LOCALIZATION NUMBERS  Following was produced by outputting a list of all non-English maps created within the year, and then sorting (and counting) by language 32 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 33. COMPARING ENGLISH TO LOCALIZED PUBLISHED MAPS  A year-over-year comparison of published map output 33 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 34. OTHER POSSIBILITIES | Looking at Quality  Another avenue we are looking at is automated quality metrics – Are actively investigating the Flesch Reading Ease metric  It follows a simple formula, which could be applied to the content of any topic  We do a lot of engineering documentation, so low scores (indicating words using many syllables aimed at those with more than a basic education) is expected  However, topics containing basic information that score especially high (such as most concepts) may serve as a guide to the writer to re-examine a topic to make it easier to read 34 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 35. OTHER POSSIBILITIES | Localization There are further gains to be had on the localization side:  Ixiasoft (DITA CMS) and XML Int’l (XTM Suite) have integrated the CMS with a translation memory (TM) suite that will allow us to use TM within CMS – Currently use segmentation matching, producing 100% matches that still need to be verified (i.e. 100% matches which still need to be verified); with integrated TM, only new content will be sent to localization vendor. 35 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 36. SLIGHT TANGENT #1: CREATING A DITA STYLE GUIDE  A recommendation for any tech docs group that uses DITA extensively: – Helps new writers/contributors come up to speed – Usefully narrows the scope of the XSL work that needs to be done – Many things are “legal” in DITA but may be poor from a “house style” standpoint, for example:  Can have unformatted block content between a header and a table in a section  Tables and figures do not have to have a title  Can have unlimited nested lists  Alpha lists can contain more than 26 items  Lists can contain only a single item 36 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 37. SCHEMATRON CAN HELP ENFORCE DITA STYLE  What is Schematron? “Schematron is a rule-based validation language for making assertions about the presence or absence of patterns in XML trees.” (Wikipedia)  We use Schematron to point out to the writers potential errors/lapses in our DITA House Style:  Text between a section and table not wrapped in block tags:  A list ought to have more than one item: 37 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 38. XSL CAN ALSO HELP ENFORCE DITA HOUSE STYLE  We have a DITA house style that says nested lists should be no more than two levels deep.  Here’s Schematron doing it’s job:  And here is the result if you try to output it: 38 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 39. SLIGHT TANGENT #2: AUTOMATION EFFORTS General rule: if a process can be automated, do so. We have a dedicated programmer who builds tools and automation processes for our group. Sample tools built include:  “Table-izer”, app that creates DITA XML table from clipboard  Automated T.O.C.  DITA Topic Editor, a tag-less editor aimed at SMEs  Automated index based from a list of keywords  Change-bar mechanism that diffs output  Dynamic trademark attribution 39 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 40. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 40 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public
  • 41. Trademark Attribution AMD, the AMD Arrow logo and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Other names used in this presentation are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners. ©2011 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. 41 | DITA Metrics in Production: How, When, Where and Why (and How Much)? | June 16, 2011 | Public