Authoring in an Agile Environment

It's a simple fact of life. Developing products in today's world requires shorter cycles, sensitivity to customer needs, and a focus on deliverables that breaks the old waterfall development paradigm. More and more there is a need for teams to focus on the entire development process and deliver precisely what customers need with little or no fluff. As products move towards the user-centric model of product development the push is for more intuitive interfaces with little need for documentation -- or does it really?

Vazquez, Julio J. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration>Agile

Concept, Task, Reference: A Practical Guide to Choosing the Right Topic Type

This presentation is for beginning to intermediate users of DITA. It's based on my experience with projects on which I'm project manager, information architect, and writer.

Kunz, Lawrence D. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Information Design>XML>DITA

How DITA Changed the Tech Comm Landscape

Before DITA, we told readers how things worked. After DITA, we tell users how to use things. Before, we wrote information linearly. After, we write individual units as needed.

SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>TC>XML>DITA

Indexing Effectively in DITA

DITA is useful for helping writers create small units of organized information that can be used in multiple contexts. Of course, the reader's problem then becomes locating the information they want in a quick, reasonable timeframe. Although DITA provides enough metadata to simplify searching, or even to present information the reader needs based on a profile, there are some media that cannot make use of those facilities. To bridge that gap, you can use the tried and true index.

Vazquez, Julio J. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Articles>Information Design>Indexing>DITA

Managing Documentation Projects: Keeping the Plates Spinning

A product is only as good as its information. With good information, customers can use the product--be it a piece of software, a hand-held electronic device, or a supersonic aircraft--and are more likely to hold a good opinion of its manufacturer. Without good information, no matter how good the product is, customers will be frustrated and will probably look elsewhere. It's not a stretch to say that the documentation project manager is instrumental in determining whether a product succeeds.

Kunz, Lawrence D. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Articles>Documentation>Project Management

Structured Authoring and DITA

What does structured authoring mean to you? Structured authoring is a publishing workflow that lets you define and enforce consistent organization of information in documents, whether printed or online. What it means to me: defining a goal and assembling architected topics to help the reader achieve that goal.

Vazquez, Julio J. SDI Global Solutions (2009). Presentations>Documentation>Information Design>DITA