An Alternative to E-Mail Driven Document Review
The most significant trend in structured content for 2010 will be the integration of authoring and reviewing. Now, people in technical publications departments are probably thinking, "It's about time!" In the rest of the enterprise, however, the reaction may be more along the lines of, "huh?"
Understandably, the advantages of integrated authoring and reviewing will be lost on people who have a difficult time grasping the whole concept of structured content -- documents that have been chunked into meaningful component parts and tagged in a systematic fashion. Structured content is an abstraction to them that doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of their day-to-day work. So, let me put it in context.
Let's say you're working on a sales proposal or a product manual or some other document that requires the input and review of other members of your department, or maybe even another department, say Legal or Human Resources. Or maybe it's a simple, internal memo to team members that has to be approved by your manager. How do you create that document and solicit the input and review of other people?
Outside the tech pubs department, the document is usually created with standard word processing software and then e-mailed to a list of domain experts and other people who review the document and then e-mail their edits back to the document author. Now, the author has multiple versions of the document, each containing unique edits proposed or mandated for the revised document. The revision process, in turn, typically includes a lot of cutting and pasting, a lot of side-by-side comparisons (either on screen or in print), and a lot of judgment calls when edits from one reviewer conflict with edits from another, among other things.
In that context, integrated authoring and reviewing of structured content means, "Stop e-mailing word processing documents to people for review." It's really that simple. Integrated authoring and reviewing replaces a chaotic, error-prone process with a streamlined, organized approach to creating content and incorporating changes proposed by people reviewing that content.
Instead of e-mailing a document to multiple reviewers -- and consequently creating the management headache of juggling multiple versions of that document -- integrated authoring and reviewing gives domain experts, editors, reviewers and casual contributors a simple and convenient Web-based environment to provide feedback on content in real time and in context.
By capturing and preserving comments across drafts, the integrated authoring and reviewing process eliminates miscommunication, backtracking, multiple versioning and other delays. Other advantages to integrated authoring and reviewing include:
Faster approval cycles, faster release of content deliverables: The document reviewing process becomes more efficient, manageable and auditable. Document collaboration is inherently team-based and conducted in real time, eliminating static silos and ending the need for multiple document versions across the reviewing cycle.
After authoring a topic or a longer document, authors upload the proposed text to a central server, which triggers an e-mail notification to reviewers. Reviewers click the link in the notification to begin editing and viewing comments directly within their Web browser, in a copy of the master document. All reviewers see and respond to each other's input instantly, eliminating redundancy and deepening the value each contributor provides.
Parallel workflows, simultaneous collaboration: An unlimited number of contributors and reviewers can simultaneously add comments and revisions to a centralized, server-managed copy of the document. Or they can work asynchronously on their own time, in their own time zone.
After submitting initial comments, reviewers can continue to add new comments throughout the review period and authors can review suggestions and edits as they're submitted. Compared to e-mail-based reviewing, in which all comments typically arrive all at once at the end of the review period, integrated authoring and reviewing facilitates using the review period for reflection and discussion.
Prevent duplicate efforts: In a traditional reviewing process, contributors work in isolation. Multiple reviewers encounter the same errors and may duplicate efforts to fix them. Integrated authoring and reviewing makes each comment or revision immediately visible to all, eliminating duplication and speeding up the review process.
Simplified comment integration: Authors traditionally face a time-consuming, error-prone task of consolidating multiple versions and comments from multiple reviewers. Integrated authoring and reviewing captures all comments in a centralized copy of the text, letting authors act on those comments with single-click integration of suggested changes, status updates and responses.
Auditable content production history: Integrated authoring and reviewing creates an auditable history, preserving a comprehensive trail of the comments, discussions and decisions that lead to final approval. Authors can assign a status to each comment to flag unresolved issues. And to ensure compliance, resolution of each comment - as well as its discussion history, approvals and rejections -- is automatically retained. A range of reporting capabilities ensures the people who need to track content generation progress are able to do so -- anytime, anywhere.
Competitive advantage: The collaborative environment of integrated authoring and reviewing transforms the business-critical document review process into a competitive differentiator by removing bottlenecks common to traditional, multi-contributor reviewing.
Sure, some people still scratch their head when they hear "structured content." But almost everybody pulls their hair out when they have to endure the document avalanche and related content coordination nightmare that comes after e-mailing a Word document out for review and approval. Integrated authoring and reviewing may well be the trend that brings the salvation of structured content to the organization at large.
Dr. Bruce Sharpe
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