DITA Metrics: Reuse Strategy and Savings Trend With Warehouse Topics
This paper is the third in the DITA Metrics series which examines the cost and reuse values for a DITA project to determine DITA ROI. The concepts and ideas discussed are based on the cost model introduced in the first paper, DITA Metrics: Cost Metrics – Part 1.
This paper provides real metrics that prove the savings that can be achieved through DITA and a solid content reuse strategy. We look at the savings trend that emerges when content referencing and warehouse topics are used to document similar products. How much does it cost to document each additional similar product?
Many thanks again to Julio Vazquez for his excellent review and feedback on this paper. Thanks Julio!
>Mark Lewis
And I'm adding a bunch of phrases to make sure this can be searched/found.
Because I had trouble relocating Ian Larner's wonderful "Touching DITA" articles for ISTC. Check them out too.
Keywords:
DITA metrics DITA reuse math DITA economics DITA cost metrics DITA reuse metrics DITA percent reuse DITA percentage reuse DITA statistics DITA formulas
single source publishing metrics
single source publishing statistics
Reuse calculate reuse calculation
DITA Cost Calculator
DITA Cost Calculations
DITA Reuse Calculator
DITA Reuse Calculations
DITA ROI
business case
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| DITA_Metrics_Reuse_Strategy_and_Savings_Trend_With_Warehouse_Topics.pdf | 197.33 KB |
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Conrefs inside topics
Thanks for providing this article (and so many others). I'd like to confirm something. Page 6 shows insertion of a unique Step 2 inside a Warehouse topic that is being reused. To achieve that, the writer makes each "step" element inside the Warehouse topic a separate conref, right?
Conrefs inside topics
Right Matt. In "Figure 4: The referencing topic", each step that is a conref is a separate conref. Others might say that is too granular to manage, but it really depends on your own business requirements. Reusing content at this level allows me to easily create all the different flavors of my documentation that I need to produce and it makes easy to maintain. Like the white paper says, storing the reusable content in a "warehouse" topic makes it easy to calculate topic-based metrics. Not necessary, because you should be able to "find" your content no matter where it is stored, but this makes the math easy.
Join the DITA Metrics group on Linked In for more resources.
MarkL