Saturday, March 1, 2008
Somewhen a robot is doing my job
This past week has been challenging. We've spiralled into freaking out as our deadlines loom and we encounter one technical roadblock after another.
In the past, we had a team of two people who implemented all our templates. They defined, designed, and delivered templates that reliably produced the CHM and PDF files that are the mainstay of our manual production. The teamwork and expertise is just not there for the transition to XML and DITA.
We have contractors converting our templates into XSLT. They're contractors. They aren't here, they aren't even in the same time zone, and the speed of communication is nowhere near light. We ask for stuff and we don't really get feedback until the the contractor deigns to deliver a revision of the XSLT and we get to see, for the first time, what it is they think we asked for. We tell a project lead on the contractor side what we want, that person assigns someone else, and that person may or may call or write to talk to us. We gave them our templates, we gave them sample documents, we worked with them through a pilot project (that they ended up cobbling together so we could ship on time) and a year later we still don't have XSLT that we can use without problems.
Going to work, these days, feels a lot like skinny dipping with piranha.
I'm not sure we could have pulled this off without the whole team. We provide enough viewpoints and collaboration to pull rabbits out of thin air.
We are a fairly robust team. This is the largest, most organized, and well-meshed teams I have ever worked with. There are no stars. There are no super-heroes. There are a number of people who respect each other and who have great work ethics.
All that said, we work in a corporation. The bottom line for the corporation produce more saleable product without increasing development costs; in fact, produce more and cost less, overall.
Thus, DITA for our user manuals. If this doesn't work, we're in big trouble because we can't do what we're about to be assigned to do unless there is a better way than what we had been doing and what we had been doing was top notch.
I don't know that DITA, as it is delivered today, would work for a smaller shop. I'm not sure about the ROI. For us, the ROI is going to be huge, even if it is only a tenth of what the promoters promise.
Today, I'm writing about a new feature that will be used on at least two of our products this year. I'll write the conceptual information and the instructions for use for one product. If the second product needs instructions, another writer will handle that. We'll have one conceptual topic used in two products. That's half the writing time, half the translation time (and cost), and half the review/validation requirement.
Next week, I'm writing about a series of features that are being created for one product that will then percolate through another seven products in the next year or two. Wow. Since the concepts will remain the same, and eventually the interfaces will merge (in this one feature set), that's eight for the price of one.
So, no, a robot won't be doing my job any time soon, but I miss the days when the template-driven process was mature, stable, and reliable. Some day we'll have that again. It's incredibly difficult to be a newbie again.
Land Mines in Action
In the past, we had a team of two people who implemented all our templates. They defined, designed, and delivered templates that reliably produced the CHM and PDF files that are the mainstay of our manual production. The teamwork and expertise is just not there for the transition to XML and DITA.
We have contractors converting our templates into XSLT. They're contractors. They aren't here, they aren't even in the same time zone, and the speed of communication is nowhere near light. We ask for stuff and we don't really get feedback until the the contractor deigns to deliver a revision of the XSLT and we get to see, for the first time, what it is they think we asked for. We tell a project lead on the contractor side what we want, that person assigns someone else, and that person may or may call or write to talk to us. We gave them our templates, we gave them sample documents, we worked with them through a pilot project (that they ended up cobbling together so we could ship on time) and a year later we still don't have XSLT that we can use without problems.
Going to work, these days, feels a lot like skinny dipping with piranha.
Global Warming
I'm not sure we could have pulled this off without the whole team. We provide enough viewpoints and collaboration to pull rabbits out of thin air.
We are a fairly robust team. This is the largest, most organized, and well-meshed teams I have ever worked with. There are no stars. There are no super-heroes. There are a number of people who respect each other and who have great work ethics.
All that said, we work in a corporation. The bottom line for the corporation produce more saleable product without increasing development costs; in fact, produce more and cost less, overall.
Thus, DITA for our user manuals. If this doesn't work, we're in big trouble because we can't do what we're about to be assigned to do unless there is a better way than what we had been doing and what we had been doing was top notch.
I don't know that DITA, as it is delivered today, would work for a smaller shop. I'm not sure about the ROI. For us, the ROI is going to be huge, even if it is only a tenth of what the promoters promise.
Today, I'm writing about a new feature that will be used on at least two of our products this year. I'll write the conceptual information and the instructions for use for one product. If the second product needs instructions, another writer will handle that. We'll have one conceptual topic used in two products. That's half the writing time, half the translation time (and cost), and half the review/validation requirement.
Next week, I'm writing about a series of features that are being created for one product that will then percolate through another seven products in the next year or two. Wow. Since the concepts will remain the same, and eventually the interfaces will merge (in this one feature set), that's eight for the price of one.
Psychic Faire
So, no, a robot won't be doing my job any time soon, but I miss the days when the template-driven process was mature, stable, and reliable. Some day we'll have that again. It's incredibly difficult to be a newbie again.
Labels: dita, standardized processes, templates, transition
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
