What does it take to be your team’s DITA Architect? Naturally, you have to thinkDITA, understand Information Architecture, use DITA for some time and know what you can do with it.

If in addition to being a DITA Author, you find yourself addicted to it, like there were no other way to do technical communication, if you read and try out all ideas you can find about DITA and related tools, then… you’re on the right path to being a DITA Architect.

There is one more thing, though. As I learned from Eliot Kimber (@drmacro), there is a difference between a geek and a nerd: the geek likes to talk about his nerdiness.

If you’re serious about the Architect role, you know it’s not enough to set up the authoring environment for the Writers in your team, especially if they are new to DITA. Apart from someone dealing with tools configuration, XML, XSLT, XSL-FO, CSS, jQuerries and Ant scripts for them, what the team needs, is answers to their questions, assistance, guidelines, code reviews, and even more answers.

You may thinkDITA and breathe DITA, but as an Architect, you have to lead and inspire DITA.

Happy DIT’ing!