< There was resistance throughout the corporation and a lot of “selling” had to occur before they reached critical mass and the adoption rate justified the investment.

This is where I am right now. I’ve use DITA and seen its benefits first-hand but internal politics are proving very difficult on the client site.

The CEO has taken a step back and asked us (team leads) to find the best solution and you know how people tend to get defensive when ‘change’ appears.

Some get it and have rowed in, whereas others are trying to undermine the move. Mike’s comments below have given me more food for thought. Not to follow up on them.

<The business case is at least 12:1 – 15:1 validated ROI on savings and avoidance alone not including reuse and direct customer benefits

This is the type of information I’m after. If you have any pointers to research data re: this ROI, please add it.

Thanks
Ivan

There are many projects underway to help tailor DITA more for environments other than software and hardware products which will also increase adoption. I see a bright future for DITA, even in Europe. I know that there are many advocates working to try to close the education gap and you should see a critical mass growing in opportunities for that market.

It looks to be an interesting ride.

Many people see IBM as a dinosaur of sorts and not very 'innovative' but my experience with them has been the opposite. Very well-run company.

Many people see IBM as a dinosaur of sorts and not very 'innovative' but my experience with them has been the opposite. Very well-run company.

They use a customized version of the Arbortext editor (a successor to Epic). But Arbortext isn't the only option: there are several good DITA-aware editors in the marketplace. Pick the one that makes sense for your organization.

One dept/office/region may embrace DITA while others don't.

Licensing can be another issue. I think IBM use Epic Editor.

eg we wrote business process maps a few years back in Visio only to find that the Boston office had no license.

Thanks for dropping by.

<resistance to adoption comes down to inertia; what we do has worked for us for years, why change?

That’s what I'm seeing too, especially in larger organizations.

There is also the risk that if you champion something, adopt it, and then it fails to deliver – you’ll get the flak.

Another problem, here in Europe anyway, is the lack of training technical writers with DITA and structured authoring skills.

So, if you do spend the money, you may struggle to find people who can hit the ground running.

Another reason, fwiw, why people often stay with Adobe FrameMaker rather than moving to Madcap and other tools.

Maybe it’s different State-side but in Europe, the critical mass of technical writers isn’t there – as far as I can see anyway.

Ivan

A lot of the resistance to adoption comes down to inertia; what we do has worked for us for years, why change? As the impetus to do more with less increases, there will be more investigation of how to do it smarter than in the past and those companies will move also. Not only do you get all the benefits of XML, but most of the heavy lifting of transforms are done for you. You can even specialize the standard so you can match whatever content model feels most comfortable for your culture.

There is a large community of evangelists (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dita-users/) that grows almost daily. Newbies are supported by those who have more experience (Leigh is one of those folks) and information is shared freely. Like most open source efforts, there is lots of free help there for those who ask.

Yes, there are some who won't move towards it. DITA isn't for everyone but when you're looking at huge amounts of data, it deserves a good look.

Can I turn this around?

1. What is the main barrier to companies adopting/embracing DITA? e.g. Inertia, knowledge, case studies etc

2. Who has adopted DITA and/or made it a focal point of how they write technical documentation? What I mean is the tech docs dept decided to maximize DITA’s potential so they could produce documents faster, better etc.

3. How can we increase the adoption of DITA? Community, productize, evangelists? You work with DITA every day and see its benefits. But not everyone does; not all technical writers/tech docs depts have made the switch.

I ask this as while I see the merit in DITA (and yes, I know it’s XML, thank you!) most of my clients still use Microsoft Word and different flavors of Adobe FrameMaker. They’ve heard of DITA but are looking into it… and we all know what that means.

How do you suggest I approach this?

Ivan