I just got pinged by my boss about this issue.  It appears there are a lot of people trying to figure out how to justify the time, money, and effort they'll need to expend in order to go with a structured content development solution.  Here's a suggestion – and I used this approach many times at Boeing Corporate headquarters where I worked for many years – include the following in your proposal:

• Return On Investment (ROI) is critical since it's the bottom line.  Money talks, and it speaks with a really loud voice, so find some numbers to show what you're spending now, what it's going to take to get you to the next level, and what your expected costs will be when you start using your projected solution.  There may be no hard and fast numbers available anywhere, so in many cases, you'll have to predict what you think the ROI will be. This webinar has a good overview of how to build a business case for S1000D

I stumbled across this article on CNN the other day (originally posted on Mashable). In it, Zeke Koch from Adobe tries to explain why so many digital magazines currently look so awful on the new iPad. He provides a lot of excuses for the print-centric model currently used by many magazine publishers. Apparently, most of the publishers choose to use images for digital distribution "because the fidelity is perfect" and that these somehow "create a quick, effortless browsing experience." And while he acknowledges that HTML is a better format for delivering to various screen sizes, no one acknowledges the very poor interactivity and accessibility of image-based publishing.

Am I the only one that feels people are getting this completely backward? We all know that digital delivery is the future for content distribution and consumption, but too many content publishers seem content to live with their current model of creating print content first and then adapting it for digital. This article proves why that's a bad strategy. The printed page is not changing. It's a pretty safe bet to claim that it's a mature platform, and the exact opposite is true for digital content where the confines of the printed page no longer apply. So why would anyone use a static approach to content delivery for such a dynamic medium? There will be a fourth iPad (whatever they wind up calling it), and a fifth and sixth. There will be other tablet competitors that are successful (even if few have yet to materialize), and eventually something completely new that is currently unimagined will come along. These are safe predictions. If Conde Nast and other magazine publishers simply continue redelivering print-centric content they will always be behind the curve and reacting to new resolution requirements or other emerging needs.

The answer is to think digital delivery first, and by the way, that would NOT be a PDF (or an image). That would be a dynamic HTML presentation layer with structured content underneath, infused with metadata. By separating the content from the format, publishers would never again be caught unprepared for a new delivery channel. 

It's a common question these days for people new to the structured content development paradigm/tech publications world.  Here's the simple answer:

• If you have to do a lot of parts related tracking and also integrate with servicing related information, go S1000D.  It's really the only thing out there with the muscle to get the job done. (by the way, you may be required to go S1000D by a government agency – so that makes the decision easy)
• If you need to run a website full of all sorts of different kinds of information – that generally does NOT require keeping track of a lot of parts and what they fit into – then go with DITA.

Yeah, it's really that simple.  DITA is incredibly flexible and there are some great tools out there to help make DITA a real workhorse in your business (check out our SDL Trisoft solution).  S1000D, because it's a more prescriptive approach to getting something big done (like documenting aircraft, tanks, trucks, cars, ships, submarines, field hospitals, aircraft carriers, etc) is a bit more challenging, but truthfully, it's a lot easier to implement than DITA. 

Basically S1000D tells you what to do and how to go about doing it – with a fair amount of analysis and design decision points built into the spec known as S1000D Business Rules that make it easier to figure out what to do for your specific situation.  DITA leaves a bit more head scratching since you commonly need to build your own set of schemas (though there are some generic starting point schemas you can pick up, you generally need to do a fair amount of data modeling to get where you want to go).  DITA does have one significant advantage – there are a lot of DITA books out there and a fair amount of available expertise you can get your hands on quickly in order to get started.

If you compare the earlier versions of the two specs, DITA about three or four years ago had a spec about 200 pages long (before you DITA geeks get too excited, yeah, I do know about all the other papers written to go along with the spec, but those don't really count since those were generally about how to build a system to compile the data and identify if you're DITA compliant).  S1000D has been in the 2,700 to 3,000 page realm for nearly six to eight years.  Granted, there are a lot of books on the subject about DITA and basically only the free specification for S1000D on the www.S1000D.org website – there are no available books on S1000D just yet, but I expect there will be soon enough.  Each has a wealth of information for you to plow through.  Each has its challenges.  Each has its faithful followers.

I lean toward S1000D because DITA could learn a lot from S1000D (and has).  DITA faithful have even created S1000D like implementations (isn't imitation the most sincere form of flattery?).  S1000D implementers dream of the flexibility of DITA, but understand why they're locked into the S1000D "standard".  That's another thing that separates DITA from S1000D.  Basically, DITA is a free form do what you want kind of standard, a "here's how you can go about doing it" approach (can I even venture to say it's a "theory Y" approach?).  Where as S1000D is more "if you're going to use it, you must use it this way – OR ELSE!" (I can definitely state it's a "theory X" approach – but sometimes that's a really nice way to make things happen)  That's what really separates the two specifications.  So, if you need a prescriptive approach, go S1000D.  If you want to make a lot of tailored and unique data models, then go DITA.

I was struck this morning by the technological change we're going through in the documentation industry.  New standards, new methods of doing business, software and hardware capabilities, and how best business practices merge together in documentation standards to produce more usable information in a timely and cost effective manner.  It may not seem all that important to you today, but it is a radical departure from what we had to do in order to put men on the moon back in the sixties.

I had the pleasure of seeing a fantastic story from Dell at this year's SDL Innovate conference, presented by MaryLee Grant. Here's the lowdown of the story...

Dell met their Return on Investment (ROI) goals in less a year by migrating to structured content using DITA, SDL Trisoft and SDL Global Authoring Management System (Global AMS), according to MaryLee Grant, Director, Information Development.

I talk to a lot of people supporting military programs who are interested in implementing an S1000D standards based technical data management and delivery strategy. They are hearing the mantra from their peers telling of the benefit of data standardization. However, the stories are similar. “We want to go S1000D, but we have not been tasked to do so”. Without a specific program directive and the funding to address the requirement, they can’t move forward. Defense cuts aren’t helping either.

Last week I was lucky enough to attend TOC 2012 with my colleague, Jon Parsons. We weren’t there to sell anything, so no manning of booths or promiscuous business card swapping was required. Instead we got to listen to a lot of fascinating speakers and converse with a lot of people in the publishing on how they’re coping with the disruption of digital content in their industry. Of course, digital content is nothing new. Music, movies, and television have all begun the transition, but for a long time, newspapers, magazines, and books were exempt. The beginning of this change dates back to the very introduction of the internet, but with the advent of ebook readers, smart mobile devices, and high resolution tablets the pace is now quickening rapidly. 

Improving customer experience is a driving business factor for organizations adopting structured content. Odds are a majority of your customers access content online with the goal of quickly finding specific information to answer a question, solve a problem or learn more about your products.

Help topics can be difficult for customers to find specific information unique to their situation. Generally a user can select help within an application or web site where generic content is displayed. With an exposition of platforms, devices and operating systems not all combinations are covered or too much information is provided. This can lead to confusion, lost time, and a frustrated customer calling a help center to gain assistance.

I'm sure that most technical communicators today would list 'working with subject matter experts' among their top 5 biggest gripes about getting their job done. With departmental silos and colleagues that are 'just too busy' to bother reviewing or contributing to documentation, technical communicators find themselves fighting a battle for people's attention and struggling to convince the SMEs that their input is invaluable to supporting the customer. But that's only half the story. 

How many of you remember the robot B-9?  (by the way, it's pronounced "benign" for those of you who missed the pun).  Remember how he nearly kills the people on the space ship because of the evil doctor who reprograms him?  That's kind of what I'm seeing out there in technical publications land at the moment.  "DANGER, DANGER Will Robinson!" Scary at first glance.  Hilarious after the shock wears off.

I'm seeing a lot of pain in the streets lately due to cut backs in spending across all areas of business and the military.  DO MORE WITH LESS!  IMPROVE QUALITY BUT DON'T SEND ME A BILL!  (imagine B-9 waving his arms and rolling around the set here).  I must assume this is what is getting the technical publications community running around with their arms in the air screaming for Will Robinson to shoot the vegetables chasing after them (a little joke for you Lost in Space fans who remember the final season).

There really is a solution to all this though.  For the industrial technical publications groups, it's S1000D.  For solutions that don't require the heavy lifting power of S1000D, it's DITA.  Really, these two standards can make life a whole lot easier.  Both are proven to make life better in tech pubs land.  They address "structured content development".  If you didn't get the memo lately about XML being a great foundation for structured content development, I can understand – what with your arms in the air and running around screaming to be saved - it can be hard to hear or read anything when you're in that condition.

If you haven't had a chance to study S1000D, there are plenty of resources out there now to bring you up to speed. This video gives you a good overview:

There are plenty of resources on DITA too.  There are documented cases of 50% cost reductions when S1000D is adopted.  More if an eye towards recycling of content for later projects is also added into the design.

If nothing else, you owe it to yourself to know what's out there so you can make intelligent decisions for new projects.  Or maybe you have an older project that needs to grow legs and stretch a whole lot.

If your project is within 5 years of shutting down, then S1000D is probably not worth the effort.  However, if you are running around with vegetables chasing you, I seriously suggest you find a cave to hide in and crack open the S1000D specification (after all, it's free and available from the web at www.s1000d.org).  Sorry, there are no instructions in the spec to build a laser gun or particle beam weapon to nuke the vegetables, but you sure as heck could document how to use a laser gun and do maintenance and repair on it.