Presented at DocTrain East 2007 Conference by Steve Manning, The Rockley Group -- Reuse has been (and continues to be) a best practice for the technical communications and training communities. Many companies are struggling with big translation localization expenses. DITA is the word most used when you ask about hot trends in the industry. What do the three preceding sentences have in common? Simple. Component-based content is part of the solution. So what is component-based content management? Thats what this session aims to help you understand. You will learn what component content management is, what the benefits are, and how it is currently being applied in different organizations. You also learn how a content component approach can help you solve your content issues. How important is component-based content creation and management? It has taken over from DITA as the most talked about subject in documentation. It is being used in many companies who have followed traditional methodologies for creating things like technical documentation, training materials, help systems and so on. But in the push to do things faster, cheaper, more flexibly, and for more people, companies are discovering that by moving to a component based approach, they can do things faster, cheaper and more flexibly. Some of the advantages they are gaining are in automating the production of outputs—getting PDF for print, PDF for online display, and HTML—with a single push of a button. Or, they are getting flexible content, where reuse is a matter of reconfiguring a list of topics, rather than cutting and pasting chunks of content between large binary files. Or they are beginning to manage extreme time frames, where panic used to be the order of the day come release time, and make release time something that is not so likely to turn hair gray. This session will describe content component management in detail and help you grasp the concepts needed to figure out if a move to component-based content can help you solve your content challenges.

1. Understanding Content Component
Management
Steve Manning
Principal Consultant, The Rockley Group Inc.
manning@rockley.com

2. Agenda
Briefest intro to TRG
An introduction to CCM
The benefits/drivers of CCM
Some scenarios
What you need to consider for CCM
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

3. The Rockley Group Inc.
2007
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

4. The Rockley Group sample clients
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

5. Component Content Management
Is the creation, management, and publication of content
as individual chunks (components) that can be
assembled into necessary outputs
Not based on the outputs i.e., chapters
Is part of the solution in most of the projects we (TRG)
work on
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

6. Create components, output ???
Whatever you want!!!
Components can be configured and reconfigured for
different outputs
Topics are assembled/related to create outputs
through:
Virtual documents
Maps (DITA)
Directory hierarchies in CM systems
Other linking mechanisms
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

7. Why CCM
Key drivers:
Reuse
Translation costs
DITA
Structure
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

8. Reuse
A definite “Best Practice”
Reuse content rather than duplicate it
Focuses revisions to a single instance
Promotes consistency
Reduces time to create and maintain content
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

9. Translation costs
Reduce costs by reusing translated components, just as
you reuse the source language components
Reduce timelines by sequencing components through
the translation process, rather than larger (chapters?)
chunks
Save money and time by automating formatting and
output
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

10. DITA
A shortcut to get to XML and
Topic-based architecture
Stucture
Reuse
Output Automation
Increasing in popularity and application
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

11. Structure
Repeatable patterns in content
E.g., Procedure (title, description, steps)
Promotes consistency
Eases the authoring process
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

12. Benefits
Faster time to market
Better use of resources
Reduced creation, maintenance and production costs
Consistent and accurate content
Increased opportunity to innovate
Decreased costs!!
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

13. Some scenarios where CCM fits
Hardware documentation
Software documentation
Government policy and procedure
Flight menus
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

14. Hardware documentation
Products in a single product line have lots of common
information, currently duplicated
Translation costs soaring as languages are added
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

15. Hardware documentation solution
CCM
Topic-based approach
Tremendous savings in translation costs
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

16. Software documentation
Content duplicated across products
Content duplicated across outputs (user guides, help,
marketing)
Collaborative authoring on all outputs
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

17. Software documentation solution
CCM
Topic-based approach
Defined structures for consistency
Using conditional text to output to user guides, help,
and marketing from a single topic base
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

18. Government policy and procedure
All information published on the web and in PDF
Different audiences require different subsets of content
- content is copied and pasted to create these varients
Too many different formats required
Huge amount of boilerplate (like contact information)
duplicated
Translation time consuming
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

19. Government policy and procedure solution
CCM
Topic based approach – DITA
Each different audience gets a different DITA map
Maps point to required topics from a library of topics
Output to HTML and PDF automated
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

20. Flight menus
Menus are printed for food service (first class and
executive – of course!!) for all flights (hundreds)
There are 4 “cycles” repeated throughout the year (Jan,
May, Sept) use the same cycle
Menus comprise food, wine, and miscellaneous items
Items can appear on any number of menus
Menus are copied and pasted
Changes are time consuming (gotta find where items
are reused)
Formatting is time consuming (gotta fix every time you
change an item)
Timelines are being squeezed (more decisions being
made at the last minute)
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

21. Flight menus solution
CCM
Each food item is maintained as a single component
Recipes point to required food items
Cycles point to related menus
CM system helps manage the relationships between
cycles and menus, as well as recipes and food items
First pass at formatting is automated, required only fine
adjustments for output
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

22. What you need to consider

23. Success is in the analysis
A successful implementation begins with a thorough
analysis of your organization issues and needs
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

24. Analyzing the content life cycle
Content is developed in many different ways, by many
different people, and by many different departments.
Development may follow a predefined process or it
may not, and if there is an established process, it may
differ from department to department.
You need to examine your content life cycle and any
issues associated with it.
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

25. Perform a content audit
A content audit is an accounting of the information in
your organization.
The purpose of a content audit is to analyze how
content is used, reused, and delivered to its various
audiences.
You need to understand how information—as well as
the processes to create it—can be unified, eliminating
the “cut and paste” method many authors employ in
their attempt to unify content wherever possible.
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

26. Create a content model
Consistent structure is vital!!!
Create a structural model of your content that clearly
describes the components and structure
E.g.,
Menu
Flight
Region
Food Items
Food Item
Name
Description
…
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

27. Create a metadata model
You cannot reuse what you can’t find!!!
Understand how authors will search for content to be
reused
Create a metadata/taxonomy strategy that ensure you
will be able to find and reuse content
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

28. Tools and technology
XML??
DITA???
Authoring
Content Management
Delivery/publishing
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

29. XML??
You can take a component-based approach without
XML, but it might be more difficult
XML give you:
Structures
Separation of content and format
Can take some time to implement
Has a learning curve!!
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

30. DITA???
Very popular
A nice shortcut to XML
Structures may not be sufficient
Has a learning curve
No so easy to deal with (customize) stylesheets!!!
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

31. Authoring
There are some excellent XML tools with varying
degrees of support for DITA
Key functionality
Ease of use
Map/virtual document creation
Tag entry
Metadata entry
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

32. Content Management
Lots of CM systems to support CCM
Both installed and hosted (SaaS)
Key functionality
Integration with editors
Where used reporting
Link management
Graphics management
Metadata management
Search mechanisms
Workflow
Publishing integration
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

33. Delivery/publishing
Very important – your job is to deliver pdf, help, etc.,
not just components
Key functionality
Integration with editors/CM
Output formats supported
Generation of TOCs, Indexes, Xrefs, related topics
Automation (hands off!!)
Standards (open source)
©2007, The Rockley Group Inc.

34. Final questions?
Steve Manning
The Rockley Group Inc.
www.rockley.com
manning@rockley.com