Ch.5 - Rockley, Managing Enterprise Content (Erik Sorenson & Emma Baumann)
This chapter talks about the content lifecycle. No doubt, as documents circulate many people will have their hands on them. Rockley states that it’s imperative that there be a unified strategy when managing content so that it can be utilized effectively by all who are involved. Rockley talks about the importance of eliminating anything that will impede the development of a unified strategy. The process of implementing a new system and methodology is a costly and time consuming task. Rockley states that it is important to take the time and analyze processes, whether they have worked well or not, in order to determine which ones will make the cut. It can be uncomfortable for those involved to have their work put under a microscope but in the end it will save time and money to identify problems and solutions in the beginning. Below is a look in to the lifecycle.
Content life cycle (in no particular order):
Deliver-Create-Review-Manage
How content is created:
Planning- Identifying need for the content
Design- Physical and contextual content, identifying templates and structure
Authoring and revision- typically all content is reviewed before publication
How content is managed:
Version Control- each document that is saved is versioned along with other documents
Access Control- allowing specific individuals to manage and change content
How content is delivered:
Companies can deliver and often will to multiple platforms. It is important to note who is receiving the content and how it is being delivered (Web, paper, PDF). How is the content managed differently for each medium?
Once all of the aspects of the life cycle are noted, it is important to look at who the content is being delivered to and how it’s being delivered to them. You need to identify the role of each user and basically interview them to see what is effective and what isn’t in their opinions. Taking in to account many views may help to deliver a more objective and useful product. There can be many issues once content is created that otherwise would go unnoticed until production if the interview process is skipped. Rockley states that this process is critical to understand how the intended audience is functioning with the product. There are a myriad of problems that can arise upon further interviewing. These problems can arise from the users and all the way back to the authors. The intention is that everything from the software and the final publication of the product be consistent in order to achieve maximum output with optimum consistency. Rockley includes multiple questions that one can ask each division of the content life cycle in order to ensure that nothing is being skipped or overlooked. Again, most of her questions aim at the goal of creating a unified content strategy, one which everyone is familiar and comfortable with.
Content life cycle (in no particular order):
Deliver-Create-Review-Manage
How content is created:
Planning- Identifying need for the content
Design- Physical and contextual content, identifying templates and structure
Authoring and revision- typically all content is reviewed before publication
How content is managed:
Version Control- each document that is saved is versioned along with other documents
Access Control- allowing specific individuals to manage and change content
How content is delivered:
Companies can deliver and often will to multiple platforms. It is important to note who is receiving the content and how it is being delivered (Web, paper, PDF). How is the content managed differently for each medium?
Once all of the aspects of the life cycle are noted, it is important to look at who the content is being delivered to and how it’s being delivered to them. You need to identify the role of each user and basically interview them to see what is effective and what isn’t in their opinions. Taking in to account many views may help to deliver a more objective and useful product. There can be many issues once content is created that otherwise would go unnoticed until production if the interview process is skipped. Rockley states that this process is critical to understand how the intended audience is functioning with the product. There are a myriad of problems that can arise upon further interviewing. These problems can arise from the users and all the way back to the authors. The intention is that everything from the software and the final publication of the product be consistent in order to achieve maximum output with optimum consistency. Rockley includes multiple questions that one can ask each division of the content life cycle in order to ensure that nothing is being skipped or overlooked. Again, most of her questions aim at the goal of creating a unified content strategy, one which everyone is familiar and comfortable with.
posted by Emma Baumann | 5:12 PM
9 Comments:
Everything you describe just validates why electronic document systems are so complex. Managing a document lifecycle is no easy task. It only gers harder when we are talking single sourcing environments.
This task must be a nightmare when foreign language translation is involved!
I realize that I’m probably repeating myself each week, but I’ll go ahead and say it: I like that Rockley is delving a little further into the unified content strategy. After reading the chapter, I get a sense of just how much effort must go into the content lifecycle. Going through all the different phases and upkeep sounds like a great deal of time and effort. Like Carl said, I can only imagine the nightmare it must be if the document needs to be translated into another language!
One question I do have is in regards to access control; only letting certain individual’s access and change the document. I can sympathize with not letting everyone and their dog have access, but I would think that everyone would have the chance to at least view the document without that ability to make changes to it.
The Content Life Cycle makes it all seem so smooth. If that were only the case. The items that really jumped out at me in this chapter were listed under "Common review issues": Repetitive reviews, inability to verify change, and confusion about decision-making processes. I've seen a lot of time wasted when an author has not included our legal department in the approval process until late in the game. That often results in major rewrites/additional disclaimers. Then the legal person wants to get more involved with other sections to be sure they have reviewed them too. The extra time it takes can really stall things. Authors need to know what documentation requires legal approval and legal needs to be involved at the beginning of those sections. Experienced authors know the drill, but it's not always passed on to new authors. Seems I'm often asking the question, "Has this been by Legal?"
Published this on the chapter 4 blog by mistake!
Document lifecycle seems to be highly complex and has to go through a numerous amount of people. I can see how some one may be skipped or how a document can become stalled with one person either making major changes or keeping the document longer than needed. I do think it is a good idea to only let a few people have control of the finished document and I'm sure that everyone else can see the doc if they so wish.
The lifecycle of a document is undoubtedly important and all the iterations that document goes through are certainly costly and time consuming. The one thing I think this chapter was a little "light" on was the finality of the documentation. Rockley addressed the duration of lifespan as being increasingly shorter, but what happens to documentation that is totally obsolete?
Rockley only devoted about two paragraphs to the lifespan, but I think it is something that is incredibly importanat. One of the great aggravations in life is trying to locate information, only to be directed to a web site that contains totally obsolete information. In my opinion, the person/organization whose site contains this [mis]information loses at least some crdibility.
One can always email the "offender," but this is a waste of my time for something that they should have already updated or removed. What is the best way to deal with that?
Sorry this post is late, I'm still catching up on reading.
This chapter makes this book something worth keeping until I get into the field. Once presented with the challenge of actually analyzing the current state of the company's content, I would go back and read this chapter a few times. It gives us complete guidelines for performing an analysis and getting all the information we need to determine whether making changes would produce an RIO, and it is specific enough to be usable in a real setting. I can appretiate the guidance, considering I'm completely in the dark about content management issues.
This chapter is very useful in the amount of information that it delivers for a variety of topics.
I think the process of using the content life cycle is very important when followed all the way though. To me the best implementation of the usage of the life cycle is if it is done in teams rather then as one individual producing the document and carrying it all the way through.
I think this is a pretty good overview of the life cycle of documents. I think the hardest part would be interviewing people just to draw the information out of them. After that, respiting out the information in an understandable form should be relatively easy. Maintenance would be a real pain though.
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