Finally catching up with my posts, starting a series of scrapbook-like articles about the events I attended in the past few months. I should be quick, as more events are coming soon…

September 2014 in Brighton was the first time I attended TCUK. Met some old friends, made some new ones, ate good sushi, attended interesting sessions and I had a great group to work with in the DITA workshop.

The workshop theme was “Implementing DITA – The work beyond the business case”, aiming to briefly present each implementation phase, to understand what the project team would have to go through and what the project plan would look like.

Have you been told that implementing DITA or migrating to a structured authoring environment would take at least two years and a six-digit amount from your budget? That might be true, but you should understand what lies beyond the business case, in order to sustain your team effectively.

Let’s walk through the phases of the DITA implementation project together and see what the project plan contains, what new skills your team requires, which tasks you can prepare in-house, and how DITA tools and architecture can work best for you.

We’ll discuss and practice:

• the implementation project plan
• content inventory and analysis
• information modelling
• reuse strategy
• DITA architecture
• DITA templates
• changes in the documentation workflow with new team roles

After attending this workshop, you will be ready to present the components of a DITA implementation package to your team. Only after getting their commitment and motivation, you can kick off a successful implementation.

Looking forward to TCUK15, here is my “storified” workshop report. Many thanks to the restless and enthusiastic John Kearney (@JK1440) who live-twitted the event.

Click the photo to view the story of “Implementing DITA – The work beyond the business case” on Storify