A white paper by Innodata Isogen -- Get Ready for DITA: Bypass Four Costly Roadblocks -- describes how companies can adopt DITA by first overcoming four roadblocks that could cause delays and cost overruns that ultimately offset the overall benefits of the implementation.

Even though DITA is clearly ready to step into a larger role, not every organization is ready to embrace out-of-the box DITA solutions. In fact, many companies need to conduct a thorough due diligence to ensure that their workflows, resources and technology are ready before they can reap the full benefits of a DITA implementation.

This paper discusses DITA in general—its background, current status, and applicability for product-support content and its ability to support this next step forward in the widespread adoption of XML. But the key thrust of the paper is the significance of specialization, and what the ability to develop DITA specializations means for organizations.

The paper also highlights four “roadblocks to success.” Failure to at least consider the implications of these roadblocks could lead to project delays and cost overruns, which in the long run would erode the cost and time savings of deploying DITA.