ROI of topic-based authoring and single sourcing

Breaking down content silos brings benefits and ROI to topic-based authoring, even if you have little or no translation. I’ve cut down time to write and maintain three deliverables by 30-40% by reusing topics.

Content silos

The company I work for supplies documentation for its software solution in different formats, among them:

• Release notes inform customers about new features and enhancements in new versions.
• User manuals describe individual modules of the product, how to set them up, how to operate them and what kind of results to expect from them.
• Online help focuses on reference information for windows and fields, but has some overlaps with information in user manuals.

Originally, these three deliverables were created and maintained in separate “content silos”, using separate tools and separate source repositories. So the documentation process looked like this:

1. Write release notes in Word.
2. Update or write user manuals in Word.
3. Update the online help in a custom-built help tool that uses Word as an editor and Microsoft’s HTML Help Workshop to publish to Microsoft Compiled HTML Help (.CHM).

I’ve found that I could save some time by writing the release notes with the other deliverables in mind, so I could copy and paste content and reuse it elsewhere. For example, my release notes describe a new batch job which helps to automate a tedious workflow. If I describe the batch job in detail, the same content fits easily into the user manual. (Yes, it bloats the release notes, but at least the information is available at the release date, while we didn’t always manage to update the user manual in time.)

Copying and pasting worked even better once I structured the content in each of the three silos as topics. For example, a task topic from the release notes would fit almost gracefully among similar task topics in en existing manual.

But such manual copy-and-paste reuse is really not efficient or maintainable, because my stuff is still all over the place. I may write in – or copy to – four places, but then remember to update only two of them; enter inconsistency and its twin brother unreliability.

Getting real about reuse

To get the full benefits and ROI of topic-based authoring, we’ve found it’s not enough to simply write topics and keep your concepts separate from your tasks. We’ve had to adjust our documentation architecture, our tools and our process.

The guiding principle is: “Write once, publish many”. This tech comm mantra proved to be the key. We now aim to have each piece of information in only one topic. That unique topic is the place we update when the information changes. And that’s the topic we link to whenever a context requires that information.

Single sourcing is the best way to get a collection of unique topics into user manuals and online help. So we needed to consolidate our separate content silos into a single repository from which we can publish all our deliverables.

MadCap Flare is the tool we chose. It gives us a reliable, yet flexible way to maintain a common repository of topics. For each deliverable, such as release notes and user manuals in PDF and online web help, we simply create a new table of contents (TOC) which collects all topics that go into the deliverable.

The writing process has changed considerably: Previously, I would focus on writing a release note entry or a chapter in a user manual. Now I find myself focusing on a specific task or concept and how to describe it as stand-alone content so it works for the user, whether it appears in a user manual or in the release notes.

The flexibilities of MadCap Flare’s conditions feature and of our DITA-based information model help us to accommodate the differences of our deliverables. We still write a few topics explicitly for a specific deliverable. For example, in release notes, short “glue” topics serve to introduce new concept topics and task topics to establish some context for the user and explain why a new feature is “cool”. In user manuals, an introductory chapter with a few topics explains what to find where and which sections to read for a quick start.

But most of the topics can now be used in release notes, user manuals and online help alike. Since I’ve gone from copy-and-paste in three content silos to single sourcing topics in Flare, the time to write and update documentation for my module has decreased by 30-40%. It’s on the lower end if a new version brings a lot of brand-new features. It’s higher if there are more enhancements of existing functionality.