Reasons to Structure

[John Posada]

>>MATT TODD <mtodd at arielcorp.com> wrote:
>>[snip]
>>
>>So tell me...why structure documentation? I don't know enough
>>to answer that question, and neither do my bosses. What's so 
>>great about it?
>>What capabilities does it offer that demand its use? Right now, 
>>I'm just doing what I'm told, but it's always nice to found 
>>actions on solid reason.

1) It's the only way you can manage large amounts of content in a
CMS. Picture having 10,000 pieces of content being shared amoung 20
writers throughout five different writing locations, and you want to
modify one of the pieces. 

Who else is using it? 
Who will it affect?

2) Take that same amount of content. Before you start writing
something from scratch, wouldn't it be nicer (and quicker, and
cheaper) to select a piece already written and drop it into your
document? It's already been reviewed and it's accurate.

3) You receive notification that your product line is now being sold
in another country and it has to be localized. Would it make a
difference in the speed and cost if you knew that 40% of the content
is shared amoung multiple documents and 40% of the content only has
to be localized once rather that four times because it is used in
four documents?

You say nothing about your business, your document volume, nor your
writing process. Are you a single writer at a single location? Don't
do it...it brings nothing to your table that isn't superceded by the
thousands of dollars it will cost you to convert.

OTOH...multiple writers in multiple locations? Maybe.

One of the main criteria? You must be writing according to a defined
process and want to repeat the process over and over, not writing
depending on what you feel like doing at any point in time.

Don't get me wrong...the later description in the above paragraph is
not bad...it's just different than the former.

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."