Book review: Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy

There are two big challenge for people  trying to develop a unified content strategy, challenges that Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper's book, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, don't overcome.

The first is that most organizations don't care about a unified content strategy.  In every business, there are good ideas that languish because no one high in the food chain cares enough to listen to reason. The costs and schedule delays are too small and spread across too many organizational boundaries for any one person to see a major impact on business operations, expenses, or revenue.

Enterprise content is, first and foremost, about the enterprise, not about the content. The enterprise is an ecosystem that produces content, to be sure, but it's mostly concerned with staying healthy by making sure that no one loses their job because they made a bad choice.

Down in the trenches, the problems are all too prevalent. Anyone who has to write anything knows that someone else is writing almost the same stuff someplace else. Things are slightly out of date or out of phase. To fix it, though, requires a major shift in operations and management. It ain't gonna happen.

The second thing is that users don't care much, either. If the manual or online help is out of date, they'll use Google or Twitter to find the answer. It gets to the point that even if the content is correct, users are so out of the habit of trusting the docs that they'll go to Google or their neighbor or the kid down the street before they'll read a help file.

So, managing enterprise content isn't about identifying types of content, developing a taxonomy that resolves concepts and terminology into a coherent whole, or any of that, as important as those steps might be. It's about understanding a) why executives don't care and b) why users don't care and then delivers something that resonates with them.

The book has no mention of organizational issues or ROI or search or SEO or even Google. In other words, the book provides valuable tips (of which there are many)  for developing and managing content unencumbered by management or users.

I've been reading books like this, along with companion white papers and presentations and sales pitches, for a quarter-century. For most of that time, I'd get excited about each new analysis, only to see another project founder on the rocks of executive apathy. I'm disappointed that we haven't advanced beyond these good books and toward solutions that executives want to deliver and people want to use.

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Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book for review. I will donate my copy of the book. I was not compensated in any other way.

No help for me

So, I'm working on a Microsoft Word document that has a bunch of fields in it. In this case, the document is a journal that shows how much work I've done on a project. The fields represent the number of hours I've worked on each task. Word has some features that let you do basic arithmetic such as add a column of numbers.
The newer version of Word have moved their option settings into places that I don't remember. I needed help finding how to have Word automatically update those fields and recalculate the number of hours I've worked. I knew it was one of the options, but couldn't remember where those options were set.
So, being a good technical writer and faithful to my profession, I looked the online help that's included with Word.



Oh, well, let's see if there's some help out there on the Intertubes.


I've known people who were technical writers and help system architects at Microsoft. They were smart people, dedicated to their work, eager to ensure that users received good online help in a timely fashion. I've been away from that business for a while. A check of LinkedIn shows that none of the people I knew are still working at Microsoft. More's the pity.

No help for me

So, I'm working on a Microsoft Word document that has a bunch of fields in it. In this case, the document is a journal that shows how much work I've done on a project. The fields represent the number of hours I've worked on each task. Word has some features that let you do basic arithmetic such as add a column of numbers.
The newer version of Word have moved their option settings into places that I don't remember. I needed help finding how to have Word automatically update those fields and recalculate the number of hours I've worked. I knew it was one of the options, but couldn't remember where those options were set.
So, being a good technical writer and faithful to my profession, I looked the online help that's included with Word.



Oh, well, let's see if there's some help out there on the Intertubes.


I've known people who were technical writers and help system architects at Microsoft. They were smart people, dedicated to their work, eager to ensure that users received good online help in a timely fashion. I've been away from that business for a while. A check of LinkedIn shows that none of the people I knew are still working at Microsoft. More's the pity.

Beware the Gargon

via Computer Gargon Baffles Users, Hinders Security: EServer Technical Communication Library

It's certainly part of Gargon's plan to baffle and hinder:

Gargon - The Urban Dead Wiki

More on technical documentation

Last night I attended a presentation and discussion regarding recent developments in the tools and technologies associated with technical documentation. The forum is sponsored by the DITA Boston Users Group (ditabug). (If you want to know more about DITA and you're not in techdoc, you might want to think about what kind of example you're setting for your children.)
There were plenty of graybeards in attendance, increasing the risk that the conversation would devolve into a fog of long-gone and best-forgotten applications and acronyms.
But, occasionally, there is a point in all this reflection on the past.
Y'see, what's really curious about many of these types of discussions is that we've been having them for at least the 30 years that I've been involved in this business. We've sought to develop methods and tools that would let us write concise descriptions and procedures and easily publish those items in print and online.
There are various other aspect to these goals, including integration with product development (so that the documentation describes the particular version of the product you are using), facilitating translation (so that the same content can be made available in three or 17 languages at the same time that the product is released), reuse (sharing pieces of information among multiple writers), and accessibility (ensuring that people with vision, hearing, or dexterity limitations can use the product and information).
The curious and ultimately frustrating thing about all of this is that we've solved it at least a half dozen times. Like Twain knowing how to quit smoking, we as individuals and as an industry know how to do the right things. We know how to fix these things; we just haven't figured out how to stop breaking them.

see more There I Fixed It