1. Fri Oct 19, 2012
Bernard Aschwanden
www.publishingsmarter.com
@publishsmarter
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 We have limited time today
 Not all slides or topics carry equal weight
 Use what you can, discard the rest
 Slides are a reference, so we may go quickly
 If you have questions, ask!
 If you are taking notes, note the slide number
 I’d love to claim that errors/typos are intentional… they
isn’t, ain’t, and weren’t never, but I’ll fix them as I can…
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 President of Publishing Smarter
 Worked in documentation and training fields since
1992
 Consultant and trainer in CMS, XML, DITA, and
publishing technologies
 STC Associate Fellow
 STC Board of Directors
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2. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Works with clients to improve content creation,
management, and distribution workflows
 Provides content analysis, legacy file conversion,
training, and support
 Main goals are to reduce production costs, improve
document quality, and increase employee productivity
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 In the interest of brevity I will be making some blanket
statements to keep things simple
 Not all that I tell you will be 100% “the truth”, but I’ll
stay as close as I can
 I will likely get in trouble from purists
◦ In some cases this is just wrong of them
◦ Of course, they will also make valid points
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 Metrics defined
 Review existing state
 Issues with traditional approaches
 New writing models & metric collection
 Complete documentation costs
 Moving forward
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3. Fri Oct 19, 2012
What are they, what do we measure,
and why?
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 Calculated measurement (planned, devised)
 Metric must have value as it pertains to project
 Used for decision making
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 Dependencies
 Critical components
 Strengths
 Processes
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4. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Time
 Costs
 Resources
 Productivity
 Quality
 Efficiency
 Customer satisfaction
 Others you may value
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 Create more accurate project estimates
 Talk clearly/numerically about why it took longer than
expected–speak with authority
 Justify expenditures (e.g. students, contractors), tools
(licenses, upgrades), or services (trainers)
 Have numerically sound reasons for updates to
procedures & processes, changes in software tools,
attendance at training or seminars, etc.
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 Justify saying “no” to increased project scope
 Measure time, money, resources, etc; use this for
making strategic decisions
 Present information in a way that is easily consumed
by management
 Determine your documentation improvement strategy
with customer satisfaction metrics
 Estimate the benefits of moving docs to a CMS
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5. Fri Oct 19, 2012
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 Don’t jump in & gather data blindly
 Get a baseline first
◦ Identify resources, assets, and known costs
◦ Review timeframes & processes for current state
◦ Get customer satisfaction stats
◦ List existing issues, roadblocks, and impediments
 Use this later to judge level of improvement and
success of any implemented changes
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 Assets include content, processes, people, tools
 Consider if now is the time to start the following:
◦ Applying new models for writing (e.g. topic-based, structured,
DITA, etc)
◦ Assigning creation of specific content to specific writers most
suited to that content type
◦ Setting up an automated publishing system
◦ Moving to agile documentation development
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6. Fri Oct 19, 2012
Reasons this may not work
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 Watch for incomplete or incorrect historical data which
can skew numbers
◦ Inconsistent collection methods
◦ Missing time frames of info (gaps)
◦ Generalized data (not broken down or detailed)
◦ Missing data (costs only, or time only)
◦ Data that does not take re-use or automated publishing into
consideration
◦ Changes in staffing
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 Does not account for important differences between
pages:
◦ Sizes
◦ Spacing
◦ Layout
◦ Fonts and font sizes
◦ Illustration size & quantity (incl. screen shots)
◦ Quickly outdates when page count changes from original
baseline
 Pages aren’t a good model
◦ Like asking how much per pound for a server or how much per
line of code for a software tool
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7. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Groups together topics without accounting for
important differences:
◦ Topics of differing complexity
◦ Topics of different types (concept, reference, task)
◦ Topics written by authors with varying skills
 More than just the written topic
◦ Illustrations
◦ Screen shots
◦ Automated content
◦ Reuse of content
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Writing has changed and continues
to evolve and develop
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 Create discreet and standalone content, then combine
to publish
 Identify the types of content you write
 Write in a fashion that supports reuse
◦ Variables, insets
◦ Conditional content
◦ Write generic, publish specifics
 In topics, specific information types can be quantified
◦ Volume of material
◦ Complexity to create
◦ Time required to develop
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8. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Assign to resources based on strengths
◦ Trainers create tutorials/how-to
◦ Developers provide source content for references
◦ Marketing, business analysts, to provide conceptual info
 Allow writers to
◦ Manage content
◦ Ensure consistency
◦ Act as the ‘voice of the user’
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 Remove overhead on processes: automate, outsource,
or give to junior staff
◦ Image gathering (basic screen shots, drop or rework how they
are captured)
◦ Editing (forget peer edits, outsource or hire staff)
◦ Indexing, linking, convert to PDF/HTML/Help, all can be
outsourced or automated
 ID the current time/cost to do all of this
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9. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Collect data from all parts of the content lifecycle
◦ Research and planning
◦ Development and reviews
◦ Publishing and beyond
 Collect data from 1, 2 or 3 versions/years back if
possible
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 For all documentation, determine costs for:
◦ Salaries and benefits
◦ Support staff/services
◦ Software and training
◦ Content storage
◦ Additional potential costs centres
◦ Total costs for all content development
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 Consider:
◦ Delay or factor in software purchase as large/initial expense?
(or billed to other dept’s)
◦ Offset training costs by savings in productivity and seen as
investments
◦ Will costs for content storage change as files are reduced in
size, or increase with the use of version control tools?
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10. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Determine what you will apply a cost against
◦ Per unit word count
◦ Per unit complexity level
◦ Per unit writer requirement
◦ Per unit non-writer requirement
◦ Per unit other factors
◦ Per unit cost identification
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 Determine how you will apply a cost against each
information
◦ By day
◦ By topic
◦ By chapter
◦ By page
◦ By word count
◦ Other
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11. Fri Oct 19, 2012
 Cost metrics are the most sought-after data for
documentation projects
 Consider collecting other data, such as metrics on:
◦ Productivity
◦ Quality
◦ Efficiency
◦ Customer satisfaction
◦ Others as applicable
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 Mgmt wants current data and collection method
 Use other tools to help, even command lines
 Extract results and use with core functions of Excel
◦ Sum, average, max, min
◦ Use concatenate
◦ Learn to chart
 Talk to developers to get help
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 With solid metrics, you can adapt the numbers for
other scenarios
 Provide realistic reduction areas
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12. Fri Oct 19, 2012
The king-hell Excel spreadsheet,
command line efforts, files/samples
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 Use other tools to help, even command lines
◦ dir *.* /b > _filelist.txt
Build a list of just files in a given folder
◦ dir *.* /b /s > _filelist.txt
Build a list of files in current and child folders
 Take the content to Excel and use spreadsheets
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13. Fri Oct 19, 2012
Your turn
Open forum, feel free to wander
Ask about anything within or beyond
scope
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If you need more help…
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 Contact Bernard
◦ bernard@publishingsmarter.com
◦ Call 905 833 8448
◦ Twitter: publishsmarter or aschwanden4stc
◦ LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bernardaschwanden
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