How to Create an Agile Content Factory for Continuous Publishing

Ann Rockley - @arockley | Charles Cooper - @Cooper_42
How to Create an Agile Content Factory
for Continuous Publishing
June 22, 2017
Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper

Ann Rockley @arockley
• Known as the “mother of content strategy”
• Creator of the concept of intelligent
content and founder of the Intelligent
Content Conference.
• Passionately committed to defining and
sharing industry best practices
• Master of Information Science
• Fellow of the Society for Technical
Communication
• Adjunct Professor, MSc in Information
Design and Development, Cork Institute of
Technology

Charles Cooper @Cooper_42
• VP, The Rockley Group
• 25+ years in the content business
• Background in businesses processes,
manufacturing process control and software QA
• Co-authored “Managing Enterprise Content:
A Unified Content Strategy”, “DITA 101” and
“Intelligent Content: A Primer”
• Contributor to “The Language of Content Strategy”
• TRG representative on OASIS TC on Augmented
Reality

The Rockley Group
• 28+ years in the industry
• Corporate
• Promotional
• Instructional
• Industry Experts
• Intelligent content strategies
• Content reuse strategies
• Structured content management
• Content creation and management
in a regulated world

Situation
• Manage and publish our content in new ways
• Rushing to make deadlines to get content ‘in’
• Look to technology to solve problems
• Multiple silos all over the organization

Current processes
• Authors continue to put together content based on their
perceived way for how the content should be written/created
• Rush to address the ‘now’ and forget about the ‘future’
• Content is duplicated over and over again
• Silos limit awareness of what content already exists
• Customer needs are fragmented across silos
• Translation/localization is duplicated and fragmented across silos

Waterfall development
Software Design Analysis
Preliminary Design
Detailed Design
Coding and Unit Testing
Integration and Testing
Configuration

There was good reason for this
• SW engineering built on the concepts of civil engineering
• Design then build

There was good reason for this
Margaret Heafield Hamilton
Lead software engineer, Apollo Program
Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT
Instrumentation Laboratory
• Tapes
• Punch cards
• Batch processes
• No time to do it on the fly
• Must be done right the first time
• That might be the only time

Problems developed
• Code got larger
• Projects became bigger
• Content creation couldn’t be started in a significant way until
the software or hardware was complete, or nearly so
• And it was more than just the ‘computer industry’…

Problems proliferated
• The same development paradigm became baked into almost
all development – from computers, to cars, to toasters, to the
design of services and to content
• Globalization required translation and localization, so more
and more content needed to be created and managed

Writers (and content creators of all sorts) got
left behind in the pressure to provide accurate,
up-to-date, compelling content.

ENTER AGILE

• The methodology associated with Agile was developed for the
software industry to speed up the development of software
• Rather than waiting until everything is finished Agile creates
iterative interim deliverables that are assessed and rapidly
updated
Agile

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping
others do it. Through this work we have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
Working software over Comprehensive
documentation
Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
Responding to change over Following a plan
That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left
more. Kent Beck, James Grenning, Robert C. Martin, Mike Beedle, Jim Highsmith, Steve Mellor,
Arie van Bennekum, Andrew Hunt, Ken Schwaber, Alistair Cockburn, Ron Jeffries, Jeff
Sutherland, Ward Cunningham, Jon Kern, Dave Thomas, Martin Fowler, Brian Marick
© 2001, the above authors. This declaration may be freely copied in any form, but only in
its entirety through this notice.
Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Benefits of Agile
• Speed-to-market
• Flexibility/Agility
• Business engagement/Customer satisfaction
• Quality and consistency
• Reduced costs/increased resource availability

There are associated risks
• Not thinking the design through (enough)
• Using Agile as a method of legitimizing chaos
• Using really bad content for the implementation
• Focusing only on the next sprint
• Getting off track in the long run
• Obsession over the ‘One True Agile’

IT’S NOT JUST FOR
SOFTWARE

Any development can use Agile techniques
• Process design
• Publically purchasable services
• Hard good design and manufacturing
• And content can too!

MANUFACTURE CONTENT
DON’T HANDCRAFT IT!

"Ford assembly line - 1913" by Unknown -
http://www.gpschools.org/ci/depts/eng/k5/third/fordpic.
htmhttp://toolkit.archives.gov/exhibits/twww/ image.
Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_assembly_l
ine_-_1913.jpg#/media/File:Ford_assembly_line_-
_1913.jpg

How to manufacture content
• Modularize content
• Don’t create content as documents
• Learn to think of content as being assembled from smaller
chunks or modules
• Create guidelines/best practices for content chunk/topic size
• Translate modules as soon as content is approved

How to manufacture content
• Pre-define content structure and uses of those structures
• Design for your future use of content, not just current
• Develop structured writing guidelines and incorporate
terminology management

One to Ten Rule
• Don’t think of writing content once and using it once – plan on
writing it once and using it 10 times
• Content becomes:
• Blog posts
• Whitepapers
• Tweets
• eBook compilation
• Video or audio interview notes and questions…

Define content structures
• What are your content structures?
• What are your content assemblies?
• When do you use each of the structures?
• What is mandatory in the structure and what is not?

Content model
© The Rockley Group Inc., The Rockley Strategic Method™

Tweet, promo, Facebook

Brochure, Facebook

Desktop web

Structured writing guidelines

Authors learn to write
• Understanding how the content can be extracted and reused
• Using structured authoring best practices
• Modules as stand-alone, single subjects (one thought)

LOCALIZATION

Structured, modular, consistent content
• Is more easily localized
• Modules that are unchanged that have previously been
translated are not translated again
• New/changed modules are translated when they are
approved, no need to wait for the entire “document” to be
complete
• When something changes, only the changed module needs to
be retranslated

Terminology becomes part of your structured authoring
• Authors learn consistent writing styles and consistent
terminology usage
• Can be part of the style guide or supported by terminology
management software

One to ten for localized content as well
• Once modular structured content is localized it can be
extracted and delivered multiple times too
• Dependent upon authors writing content using structured
content best practices to create stand-alone content

Localization becomes continuous
• Small modularized content is sent on a continuous basis
• As content is localized and approved it is released
• Release of content is continuous
• Frequent releases are agile releases

GOVERNANCE

Governance is not a ‘four-letter word’

Strategic content governance

Strategic content governance
• Content is created to last
• You must set up a process to manage the content across
groups, departments and through time
• It can be simple or complex, but it must meet your needs
1 5
3
2 4
Examine
and get
input
Distribute
information
Receive
Request
ImplementSanity
Meet and
Decide
SME
6
7
Reject
8
Top Level Taxonomy Governance
ImplememtationGovernanceBoardGovBoardLead/ChairpersonRequestorOthers
Request Change
High Priority?
Inform Requester
of assigned initial
review status
Queue for next
meeting
Set Agenda
Send Agenda and
“Request Info” to
GB members
Call Special GB
meeting
Send Agenda and
“Request Info” to
GB members
GB Meeting
Review Requests,
Appeals
Approve?
Inform Requester
of approval status
Inform Requester
of Status
Inform
Implementation
Agree with
assigned
status?
OK Appeal (to whom?)
Agree with GB
decision?
OK
Implement
Y Y
Y
Y
N
N N
N
Provide info to GB
members
Pre meeting
review and
information
gathering
Sanity Check
Revise/add
requested
information and re-
submit
N
Y
Initial Review
Notification
Pre-meeting investigation

Reuse governance
• What content can be reused?
• How it can be reused (identically or with change)?
• Who is allowed to change reusable content?
• Where/when it can be reused?

AUTOMATE PUBLISHING

Hands-off publishing
• No need to hand lay out content in any format (web,
print, mobile)
• Use templates/stylesheets
• ‘Pour’ content into stylesheets
• Refine stylesheets for optimum display, but never with
content in it
• Never, ever, change content in output - always change
content in the source

An Agile Content Factory is:
• Based on the manufacturing paradigm
• Content is consistently structured for infinite use and reuse
because it’s:
• Modular
• Adaptable
• Governed
• Designed with translation and localization in mind

Questions
rockley@rockley.com cooper@rockley.com
Augmented Reality in Information Products
(ARIP)
Developing specifications, guidelines, and
best practices to standardize key aspects of
AR user experiences.
http://bit.ly/1MxofPw

How to Create an Agile Content Factory for Continuous Publishing

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