In this webcast, Sarah O’Keefe discusses the results of Scriptorium’s 2011 survey on structured authoring. Topics include adoption rates, tools, implementation costs, lessons learned, and much more.

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flickr: thelastminute
Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing
Monday, May 9, 2011

2. ❖ Everyone is muted except for the
presenter
❖ Please ask your questions through the
Questions area in the webcast interface
❖ The presentation is being recorded;
attendees do not appear in the
recording.
Monday, May 9, 2011

3. ❖ Founder and president, Scriptorium
Publishing
❖ Content strategy for
tech comm
❖ Interested in collision of
content, publishing, and
technology
Monday, May 9, 2011

4. ❖ Survey conducted via web
(surveymonkey.com)
❖ January and February 2011
❖ Recruited participants through direct email,
Twitter, blog posts, and word of mouth
❖ Approximately 200 completed survey
❖ Almost identical to 2009 survey
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5. ❖ A publishing workflow that lets you
define and automatically enforce
consistent organization of information;
implementations are generally based on
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
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6. ❖ “Have you implemented structured
authoring, or do you plan to do so?”
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8. ❖ Have implemented
❖ 2009: 29%
❖ 2011: 42%
❖ Undecided
❖ 2009: 21%
❖ 2011: 10%
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9. ❖ Choose the most important reason for
moving to structure.
❖ Original survey included compliance
and personalization, but those were the
bottom two choices.
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12. not
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14. ❖ “Doesn’t make sense in a single-author
environment.”
❖ “The payoff just isn’t there.”
❖ “No compelling benefits…”
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15. ❖ “Too much change…”
❖ “Not even thinking inside the box, let
alone outside”
❖ “Not sure how it will impact us.”
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17. ❖ “Automated daily publishing”
❖ “Reduction of total content”
❖ “Step toward separating content from
presentation”
❖ “Short time to provide more languages”
❖ “Easier workflow
❖ “Rebranding, variants”
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19. ❖ 2009 result: $106,000
❖ 2011 result: $124,500
❖ 2011 non-DITA: $69,000
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20. ❖ More CMS = more cost
❖ More realistic about costs?
❖ Reuse requires CMS?
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21. ❖ Specialization
❖ Complex output requirements,
especially PDF
❖ Legacy documentation conversion
❖ Content management systems
implementation
❖ Large number of contributors
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24. ❖ “What CMS do you (or will you) use?”
❖ 33–34%: Do not use
❖ Other responses: Astoria, Author-it,
Contenta, Docato, Documentum,
IXIASOFT, Schema ST4, SharePoint,
SiberLogic, Subversion, TIM-RS,
Trisoft, Vasont, XDocs, and many,
many more.
Monday, May 9, 2011

25. ❖ Past implementers:
❖ 50%: Do not use a CMS
❖ Leaders: Astoria, Vasont, IXIASOFT,
XDocs
❖ Current implementers:
❖ 36%: Do not use a CMS
❖ Leaders: Astoria, SharePoint, Trisoft
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27. ❖ “Not realizing the scope of the effort.”
❖ “Not planning for CMS integration.”
❖ “Lack of testing.”
❖ “Involving the marketing department.”
❖ “Implementing in a live production
environment with the wrong tools, which were
still being decided upon during live project
development. Disaster!”
Monday, May 9, 2011

28. ❖ “Trying to use inexperienced offshore labor to
do conversion/editing/development.”
❖ “Not using a vendor to convert our legacy
documentation.”
❖ “Too little time reserved for conversion.”
❖ “Insufficient imposition of consistency in styles
before conversion to DITA. Insufficient
imposition of consistency in procedures before
conversion to DITA.”
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29. ❖ Document conversion a huge problem.
❖ Project complexity much higher than
anticipated.
❖ Many complaints about “the wrong
CMS.”
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30. ❖ “General immaturity of many products in
the XML/DITA space.”
❖ “The lack of excitement and initiative
shown by DITA authors.”
❖ “The lack of enthusiasm among
management.”
❖ “Major reduction of translation costs,
over 50%.”
Monday, May 9, 2011

31. ❖ “One author never really understood topics.”
❖ “Productivity increased from 800 pages per
writer per year to 3200+ pages per writer per
year.”
❖ “Excessive amount of time spent using
structured tools to enter content.
Productivity has been reduced by an average
of 40 percent.”
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32. ❖ “People have responded very positively
to our new and improved
documentation, when we didn't expect
that many people to notice or to take
the time to respond.”
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33. ❖ Issues with tools
❖ Lack of maturity
❖ Difficult to use
❖ Change resistance…or not
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34. ❖ scriptorium.com/resources/webcasts for
the webcast recording in a day or two
❖ Check scriptorium.com/events for
upcoming events
Monday, May 9, 2011

35. ❖ Sarah O’Keefe,
okeefe@scriptorium.com
Twitter: @sarahokeefe
Monday, May 9, 2011

36. Monday, May 9, 2011