Chapter 4 - Managing Enterprise Content-Rockley
Rockley addresses the need for understanding your organization's needs and goals in order to build an effective unified content strategy. To do this one must look within the organization to find out what type of content management and authoring issues may be present.
By addressing dangers such as economy, missing the market window and legal liabilities an organization can prepare for such situations before they arise. For example, a unifed content strategy can aleviate costs for content development and maintenance. This can free up an organization's budget when times aren't so good.
Rockley also states that within the dangers are opportunities such as faster time to market, new/improved product or service and improved customer support. By having a unified content strategy, it allows information to be changed quickly for new services or products without having to start from scratch. When a company realizes their strengths, they also will see opportunities. Rockley says that by focusing on an organization's strengths, they develop a positive outlook for moving forward. Some of the most common strengths are people, market recognition/ customer loyalty and innovation. A unified content strategy can assist in supporting these strengths for an organization. A good example of this is when customers respond favorably to more effective content therefore becoming more likely to remain loyal.
Rockley writes of the importance for an organization to also identify their goals, which are based on available opportunities, as well as identfy the challenges before moving forward with changes. The chapter states that one way of determining challenges is to ask key people within the organization what they perceive as challenges that could impact the organization's goals. Some of the most common listed are: time and money, resistance to change and maintaining existing deliverables.
To conclude Rockley says it is important to realize that a unified content strategy will not be a solution for all dangers, indentified within the organization. It's focus is intended to help solve problems experienced within the organization in the areas of content creation, management, delivery and communication with internal and external customers. This is just one piece of an organization's overall corporate strategy to addressing dangers, realizing opportunities and building on strengths.
posted by Jaya Narayana | 6:43 AM
11 Comments:
In the quest to implement a Unified Content Strategy Rockley stresses knowing an organization's dangers. The trouble for technical communicators is that management has usually already identified the dangers they perceive and documentation usually isn't one of them. While the dangers in poor documentation are real, the tendency is for management to gloss over documentation issues. Management needs to be educated on their documentation environment. How well we do this usually determines if funding will occur to remedy the problem.
This chapter made it clear to me how a unified content strategy can help an organization. Particularly, the part about not having to start from scratch but just changing information with the unified strategy makes a lot of sense to me. I also think it is a smart idea to focus on the organization's strenghts rather than weaknesses - this motivates people in a positive way and I think it encourages employees to do their best as well.
Like some others in the class, I’ve taken a liking to the unified content strategy. It sounds like something that would tremendously help a company with its documentation, product development, and consumer available information. It sounds like a tremendous tool that could really help a company and I was happy to see that it was fleshed out a bit more in this chapter.
However, I do have to agree with Carl’s comments on how badly this strategy could be handled by management. I know from personal experience that what sounds like a great idea to people who are “in the trenches” is sometimes seen as not so good by those higher up in the company. If you want their support, you have to show them how this will make the company stronger both productively and financially. Although you may feel like it doesn’t need it, you may have to give a hard sell to get the strategy over.
I'm amazed at how often I hear about rhetorical analysis in technical writing. Over and over again, we're told 'analyze the situation', 'assess your options', 'think about the consequences.' It seems the golden rule to technical communication is to do your prep work first. This chapter basically reinforces that need to think about your situation, your possible actions, and the consequences that could occur. I know that decisions are never ideally made, and therefore content management specialists need to determine what will be the most affordable and benefitial method of content management, even if the best decision is to do nothing at all.
This chapter presents yet another idea to efficiently handle perils of documentation. It really sells its case for unified content by pointing out the different uses and strengths that it has. Unfortunately, as carl said, the immediate thought, when it comes to danger, is not in documentation, although many issues can stem from it quite easily.
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?"
I think a certain amount of strategic insight about their company is needed by everyone, and that is what the author is trying to say here. While market windows are important to management, lawsuits from poor documentation will negate any economic gains resulting from a rush to market. Obviously, unified content could help shorten the time (and money) needed to produce effective documentation.
Customer loyalty is addressed in this discussion; I have purchased IBM computers as a direct result of being provided with superior customer service-including documentation-from them. Their documents are always thorough and are very well-written; effective content is one of their hallmarks. IBM has had their share of ups and downs, but their documentation is always great.
Going along with what Emma has said, this chapter made it clear to me how important it is that there is a unified content strategy. It actually seems quite complicated to achieve in reality but the concept of why it's needed is becoming more and more obvious. I will admit that when I first started reading the book I found the title confusing and it sounded so complicated. I think Rockley does a good job of presenting the information in terms that I can understand with no prior content management experience.
This chapter talks about the necessity for a unified content strategy. The points covered makes sense to me and I fully believe that a content strategy is needed.
I think this chapter breaks down the importance of content strategy very well. The discussion point of the dangers, opportunities, and strengths bring up very good point to always keep in mind and in practice. I do believe in the point Carl was talking about with management over looking the importance of documentation. I believe that most of the time documentation is overlook because most do not understand the subject matter or the process so the are intimidated to bring up the subject without knowing something about it.
I like the emphasis on planning on this one. Virtually every time I've had trouble with a project was due to failure of planning accurately.
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