dealing with the input providers

Barry Schaeffer - Content Life-Cycle Consulting

Dealing With The Input Providers

April 30th, 2014

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Barry Schaeffer

• 50 years of relevant professional experience to planning and change/project

management in today's information world

• Successfully shepherded organizations of all sizes and types through the often

tortuous process of meeting their growing information demands

• Frequent author & presenter in the content life cycle universe; publishing

articles in Datamation, FCW, GCN, Intranet Development Magazine, EMC

Community & CALS Journal. He was new media columnist for Newspapers &

Technology Magazine & is currently a featured columnist for CMSWire

• Specialties: Information life cycle analysis, change management,

organizational response to technology, authoring productivity design,

application of Concurrent Engineering principles to information management.

Providers… who are they?

• The raw material for everything you deliver.

• May be located anywhere in the world.

• Not just people who type things.

• Usually know more about their content than you do.

• Are (usually) not hired to feed your systems.

• Have their own set of problems… not yours.

• Can be your best partner or worst nightmare.

…and why should we care?

What do you want from them?

Co-operation and discipline!

What do you want from them?

• Data with the necessary structure to create your output products

• Data delivered on-time

• Data with high consistency and low error rates

• Willingness to embrace, and meet, your needs, demands and schedules

• Willingness to trust you won’t do them in

What do they want from you?

To be left alone to do

what they have

always done

If you can’t do that, then…

What do they want from you?

• You to accept their data as close as possible to the way they are comfortable creating it

• You to work hard to cushion the changes to their procedures and tools

• You to provide funding for any changes you want them to make

• You to give them plenty of time to change… and a fall-backplan if it doesn’t go well

How should you approach them?

• Start early: whatever happens, it will take time.

• Be transparent: if they sense they are being conned or ignored, they will push back… hard.

• Respect their current methods and tools

• Plan for minimum impact on their world

• Show them strong software support up front for any changes in their procedures

• Include them in the design effort: it will reassure them, and they often have great ideas

• Don’t assume you can tell what to do.

What are your Options?

• Take their content as-is and convert/rework it: (minimum impact for them/highest cost and complexity for you)

• Change their authoring tools to fit your needs:(XML editors, etc: best for you/biggest changes for them)

• Enhance their current authoring environment to simplify conversion/minimize cleanup: (moderate impact on them but favorable for you.)

The Challenges

Revisions

Prepare Convert Cleanup FinalAuthor

Revisions Revisions

XML?

XML?

Take their content as-is and convert/rework it:

• Any content can be converted: the difference is in the amount of clean up and completion required… sometimes virtual re-authoring

• This is lowest impact but also maximum limit on quality of resulting content

• Unless you plan to stay with this approach, don’t start it. Once it works, even poorly, it will become the providers’ method of choice.

Change their authoring tools to fit your needs:

• They are probably using Word or Word Perfect and want to continue it.

• If you decide (and can) push them into an appropriate authoring tool, they will resist, so:• Set up an authoring lab where you can show them tools you are

creating for them

• Make the editor you choose as comfortable as possible up front (nevershow it out of the box first.)

• Give them time to adapt; focus on early adopters; and always provide a fall back for those who need it

Enhance their authoring environment to simplify conversion/minimize cleanup:

• Even word processing can be disciplined to make it easier to convert.

• Authoring applications can simplify complex structures, validate input and impose value lists, etc.

• Select your conversion method early so you know how close you must be to convert successfully.

• Work with providers to encourage them to make revisions to the final form

So… what About Revisions?

• If the output changes after publication, you must revise your deliverable content

• If you have converted the source to something else… what do you revise?• Revise the original, but you must prepare, convert and cleanup each

time.

• Revise the pre-conversion form, but you must still reconvert and cleanup each time.

• Convince the authors to revise the final form… using the appropriate editing tool.

Conclusions

• Getting from source to deliverable successfully is seldom a matter of black or white, but finding the right shades of grey.

• You will do it best if you understand each portion, function and participant going in.

• Starting right and including every participant will insulate you from mutiny by the authors

• Keep your wits about you, get help where you need it, tread carefully and you will be successful .

Q&A

Linda Morone Cassola

Senior VP of Sales and Marketing

(718) 307-5728

LCassola@dclab.com

Barry Schaeffer

Content Life-Cycle Consulting(703) 819-2135

Bschaeff@contentlcc.com