In a recent survey, Scriptorium Publishing found that a majority of technical writers will be working in a structured authoring environment by 2010.

Structured authoring is a publishing workflow that defines and automatically enforces consistent organization of information. Implementations are generally based on Extensible Markup Language (XML).

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“Most of our consulting projects involve XML,” said Sarah O’Keefe, President, Scriptorium Publishing. “This survey shows that our anecdotal experiences, such as the importance of change management, match the industry situation.”

The survey, conducted in early 2009, had more than 600 responses.

Participants cited content reuse, document consistency, and cost/effort of developing content as the primary factors driving them into structured authoring.

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) standard was the dominant standard employed.

40 percent of existing implementations and approximately 60 percent of in-progress and planned implementations are based on DITA.

Implementations were generally quite successful.

90 percent of respondents with completed implementations reported that they had improved document consistency.

86 percent were successful in content reuse, and 70 percent reduced the cost and effort of developing content.

When asked about implementation problems, 37 percent cited difficulties with project management, including “failure to plan” and “insufficient analysis.”

“The survey validates our current methodology,” said O’Keefe. “We establish goals and metrics long before any technical work begins.”

Change management was a significant concern. Of the 16 percent who did not plan to implement structured authoring, one third cited the inability of the staff to adjust to a new authoring environment as a factor.

Staff turnover was also a problem for nearly 30 percent of past and nearly 20 percent of current implementations.

The survey data indicates that private, customized training improves outcomes by increasing the percentages of respondents who achieved their goals. Interestingly, private training also correlated with change resistance.

The 56-page report is available at  www.scriptorium.com

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