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Centralized or Decentralized Authoring? - Page 2

Finding time

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing decentralized authoring is the lack of available time.

Staff already have a full-time workload with their normal activities. Authoring is then an additional activity, on top of their existing responsibilities.

Unless management provides staff with sufficient time and resources, it is unreasonable to expect them to shoulder this additional work for an extended period of time.

The danger is that content creation will then slowly 'wither away'. If this happens, the CMS as a whole will fail.

To avoid this, explicitly include content creation in the job descriptions for staff, and provide sufficient time for them to do their authoring well. This should also be assessed as part of their normal performance review.

Centralized authoring

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This involves setting up a dedicated team to create new content, and manage the publishing process. This team consists of the following roles:

• technical writers
• editors
• journalists
• indexers
• subject matter experts

There is close liaison between the team and the business groups that 'own' the content. In this way, the content team acts as a 'service group' for the rest of the organisation.

All information that is published by the team is reviewed and signed off by the business, to ensure accuracy and relevance.

Techwriters know how to write, subject matter experts know the business: you will need both

Advantages

• Team skills ensure very high quality content.
• Simplified project management.
• Ensures that resources are available for even large jobs.
• Allows development of large, complex and highly structured material.
• Provides a central location for feedback.
• Ensures global consistency, and extensive cross-linking.
• Supports continual improvement.
• Ensures accountability for changes.
• Reduces the need for powerful and costly IT solutions (such as workflow).
• Provides a 'driving force' behind content updating.

Disadvantages

• Centralized team requires full-team staff and resources.
• Can form a bottleneck to updates, if not efficient and responsive.
• Updating is separated from business owners.
• Relies on processes to notify the team of changes.

Ties with the business

A centralized authoring team cannot work in isolation from the rest of the organisation if it is to meet business needs.

Close links and communication channels must be forged between the centralized group and the content owners.

If the content is to be kept up to date, mechanisms must be put in place to notify the team of changes or updates.

If these notifications are to be sustained in the long-term, they must be incorporated into the standard business processes.

Workflow

While the ease of coordinating a single centralized team reduces the need for a workflow system, it still has much to offer.

With all first-draft material being written by the central team, workflow manages business review and final sign- off.

The workflow system sends the revised content back to the content owners, before routing it through final editing and any legal sign-off.

If there are a limited number of content owners, it is possible to avoid the cost of a full workflow system, and implement manual processes instead.

Professional standards

If the centralized team is to deliver value to the business, it must conform to the highest professional standards.

This includes:

• Documented style guides for authoring, indexing and linking.
• Rigorous project management and change control.
• Full audit trail of changes.
• Comprehensive process for editing, reviewing and authorising updates.

A centralized team is only as valuable as the professional standards it meets

Guidelines for selecting a model

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This section outlines some broad guidelines for when to use decentralized or centralized authoring.

Use Decentralized authoring when:

• Content is already created as a normal part of daily activities (eg. business documents).
• Information is for internal use only.
• Frequent updates must be made.
• Quality of information is not critical.
• Staff have the time available to prepare and write content.

Select an authoring model to meet your business needs

Use Centralized authoring when:

• Information is very complex, or highly structured.
• There are legal issues surrounding the release of the information.
• Information is commercially-sensitive.
• A very high writing standard is required.
• The information must be 'distilled' from many different sources into a brief format.
• Overall structure and consistency is required.
• Content is to be published externally.

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