Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy

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Overview

Smartphones, eBook readers, and tablet computers like the Apple iPad have forever changed the way people access and interact with content. Your customers expect the content you provide them to be adaptive --responding to the device, their location, their situation, and their personalized needs.

Authors Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper provide insights and guidelines that will help you develop a unified content strategy?a repeatable, systematic ...

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More About This Book

Overview

Smartphones, eBook readers, and tablet computers like the Apple iPad have forever changed the way people access and interact with content. Your customers expect the content you provide them to be adaptive --responding to the device, their location, their situation, and their personalized needs.

Authors Ann Rockley and Charles Cooper provide insights and guidelines that will help you develop a unified content strategy—a repeatable, systematic plan that can help you reach your customers, anytime, anywhere, on any device.

This up-to-date new edition of Managing Enterprise Content helps you:

  • Determine business requirements
  • Build your vision
  • Design content that adapts to any device
  • Develop content models, metadata, and workflow
  • Put content governance in place
  • Adapt to new and changed roles
  • Identify tools requirements
With this book you’ll learn to design adaptable content that frees you from the tyranny of an ever increasing array of devices.
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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble Review
“Content” is the lifeblood of business. Today’s companies generate staggeringly large amounts of content -- and not just on the Web and intranets. Managing Enterprise Content is about getting your arms around all that content, reusing it more effectively, driving out cost -- and driving more business value from every word your people write.

Finally, here's a discussion of content management that doesn’t require years of SGML experience writing zillion-page manuals for Boeing! This book has been carefully crafted for multiple audiences: content managers seeking to define and implement unified content strategies, information architects working in any media, authors looking for practical advice on more effective writing and collaboration, and decision makers hoping to realistically assess the ROI of content management.

You’ll learn how to plan (and compare your options for) content reuse -- and when reuse simply isn’t practical. And you’ll discover how to perform an enterprise-wide content audit, identify the “pain points” you need to address first, and break down the “silos” of separate content development that may be your biggest obstacle.

Ann Rockley and her colleagues cover information modeling, workflow, XML, tools, delivery systems -- and especially the difficult cultural and technical transition to unified content management. There’s plenty of experience behind these recommendations. Whether you’re a global enterprise trying to regain control over content, or a smaller company trying to squeeze more value out of every data sheet, this book is indispensable. Bill Camarda

Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks For Dummies®, Second Edition.

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780321815361
  • Publisher: New Riders
  • Publication date: 3/1/2012
  • Series: Voices That Matter Series
  • Edition number: 2
  • Pages: 384
  • Sales rank: 584012
  • Product dimensions: 7.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Ann Rockley, President of The Rockley Group, Inc. has an international reputation for developing XML-based content strategies. She has been instrumental in establishing the field in eContent, content reuse, intelligent content strategies for multi-platform delivery, eBooks, and content management best practices.

Charles Cooper, Vice President of The Rockley Group, Inc., has over 20 years of experience in quality assurance and over 15 years of experience in eContent, user experience, taxonomy, workflow design, composition, and digital publishing. He teaches, facilitates modeling sessions and develops taxonomy and workflow strategies.

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Table of Contents

Section 1: The basis of a unified content strategy
Chapter 1: Content: The lifebood of an organization
Chapter 2: Intelligent content

Section 2: Where does a unified content strategy fit
Chapter 3: Enterprise content: Web and beyond
Chapter 4: Publishing
Chapter 5: Product content
Chapter 6: Learning materials

Section 3: Performing a substantive audit: Determining business requirements
Chapter 7: What does your customer really need?
Chapter 8: Where does it really hurt?
Chapter 9: Analyzing the content lifecycle
Chapter 10: Performing a content audit
Chapter 11: Envisioning your unified content strategy and lifecycle

Section 4: Developing a unified content strategy
Chapter 12: Content modeling: Adaptive content design
Chapter 13: Reuse strategy
Chapter 14 Designing workflow
Chapter 15 Designing metadata
Chapter 16: It's all about the content
Chapter 17 Change management and governance

Section 5: Supporting your unified content strategy
Chapter 18: Changing roles
Chapter 19: The role of XML
Chapter 20: The role of content management

Section 6 Resources
Glossary
Bibliography
A: Checklist for implementing a unified content strategy
Index

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5
( 13 )
Rating Distribution

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  • Posted Sun Jun 24 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    If you are learning about content strategy/content management an

    If you are learning about content strategy/content management and your immediate questions are Docbook or DITA? Or which CMS should I use? Then you haven’t done your homework. If you want your project to succeed, follow the book, do the content audit, learn the difference between structural reuse and content reuse, determine your own content requirements and design new processes to support your content lifecycle. This book will guide you through the process. It contains all the steps for success.

    On a personal note, this book has been a core resource for me. I keep referring to it. And with it updated to the latest tech and methodologies, I’m sure I’ll use the second edition as much as I did the first. This book didn’t just change my career. It gave my career a path.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Thu Nov 08 00:00:00 EST 2012

    This book should be required reading for every technical writer

    This book should be required reading for every technical writer and technical writing student. Period.

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  • Posted Thu Jul 12 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    Ann Rockley, literally, wrote the book on managing enterprise co

    Ann Rockley, literally, wrote the book on managing enterprise content with her seminal work, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy, in 2002. At the time, the book helped launch an entire discipline and a call for organizations to view content as a corporate asset. In fact, some regard Rockley as the “mother” of content strategy.

    Now, 10 years later, the second edition of Rockley’s book is on bookshelves, and with it a decade’s worth of new information, ideas and evolved thinking around managing enterprise content. Rockley’s coauthor in the 2012 version of this 370-page tome is Charles Cooper, an executive with The Rockley Group, Inc.

    With roots in technical communication that include content reuse, XML-based content strategies, multi-platform information development, taxonomies, workflow design and digital publishing, both Rockley and Cooper are well qualified to help their readers learn and comprehend the principles explored in this rapidly-changing discipline.

    What I like most about their book is how it’s organized. They indeed practice what they preach. The book is organized almost like a tutorial. It’s five major sections walk the reader through a well-marked path:

    1. The basis of a unified content strategy
    2. Where does a unified content strategy fit?
    3. Performing a substantive audit: Determining business requirements
    4. Developing a unified content strategy
    5. Supporting your unified content content strategy

    In the book’s sixth section the authors include plenty of resources, including a comprehensive glossary and bibliography, and checklist for implementing a unified content strategy.

    If you’re a content manager, content strategist or author, this book is meant for you. If you’re not in one of these roles, you’ll still learn a lot, particularly if you have experience working in organizations that produce marketing content, technical documentation or service information that’s being accessed by multiple stakeholders across multiple platforms, such as the computers, printed documents, smartphones, and tablets.

    According to Rockley and Cooper, “A unified content strategy is a repeatable method of identifying all content requirements up front, creating consistently structured content for reuse, managing that content in a definitive source and assembling content on demand to meet customer needs. A unified content strategy makes it possible to deliver content to any customer, anywhere, and on any device without having to rework the content at every stage.”

    Rockley and Cooper spend the remainder of their book telling us how to achieve these results and avoid the potholes you’re bound to find along the path. For those that do succeed, the benefits of a unified content strategy are numerous: “Faster time-to-market; better use of finite resources; reduced costs; improved quality of content; and, unlimited device delivery.”

    Written in a nonacademic style, this how-to book is easy to follow. Its principles and ideas can be implemented almost immediately. Case studies from actual companies in most of the chapters reveal how organizations have found success applying the principles the authors espouse.

    Buy this book and keep it close by. It’s a must-read for the serious content strategy practitioner; beginner or advanced.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted Sun Jun 24 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    If you are learning about content strategy/content management an

    If you are learning about content strategy/content management and your immediate questions are Docbook or DITA? Or which CMS should I use? Then you haven’t done your homework. If you want your project to succeed, follow the book, do the content audit, learn the difference between structural reuse and content reuse, determine your own content requirements and design new processes to support your content lifecycle. This book will guide you through the process. It contains all the steps for success.

    On a personal note, this book has been a core resource for me. I keep referring to it. And with it updated to the latest tech and methodologies, I’m sure I’ll use the second edition as much as I did the first. This book didn’t just change my career. It gave my career a path.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted Tue May 29 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    Save time and effort by relying on the Content experts--read this book if you work with and manage content.

    This review is for: Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter) (Paperback) It's taken me years and a lot of hard work to learn what Rockley and Cooper have so conveniently provided in in this great update of a content management classic, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter). Written by Rockley Group founder and president, Ann Rockley, and Group vice president Charles Cooper (with a foreword by Kristina Halvorson), the book covers all you need to know about creating a comprehensive content process. At 365 pages, the update might seem hefty, but it's chunked nicely into logical chapters that are short and very easy to absorb. The book is a nice carry-around size, and it sports a new cover and interior design, which is, quite frankly, gorgeous. Updated typefaces, sharp illustrations sprinkled throughout, and restful shading strategically placed in headings and on some pages makes the reading easy on the eyes. Kudos to Peachpit book designer Mimi Heft, who did a fantastic job. Comprehensive enough for a beginner, but written in language that doesn't talk down to hard-core process people, Rockley and Cooper start with the all-important definition of content (which they call the "lifeblood of an organization"). From there, they cover basic information and then they delve into the many aspects of content strategy as it relates to real-world processes in the context of delivery on today's multiple platforms. By the second chapter, they get to the heart of the matter: the strategy and tasks needed to develop a content strategy that works. Topics covering models and content reuse; process discovery and design; workflow, metadata and taxonomy; and organization roles are covered. Additionally, methodologies [including an introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and XML] and a smattering of suggested authoring tools and content management systems are very helpful. The resources chapter is a great ending, where the checklists alone make the book worth buying. I wish the book had arrived last month, when I was part of the team revamping the content management process for a large high-tech company that I consult with. The detailed theory, conceptional information, and concrete how-to steps would have saved me a lot of explaining to those unfamiliar with business process improvement. It's an excellent primer on content management. Give it a read, and you won't be sorry. I give this book 5 stars.

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  • Posted Wed May 02 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    more from this reviewer

    It’s always been about the content. What’s new is wh

    It’s always been about the content. What’s new is where we’re using it. Since starting out as a writer and editor in the dim, distant 1980s, I have had to work with a growing set of deliverables of many types and serving a more diverse audience. Imagine having to deal with one large printed document, then being told it will go online, be broken up into smaller pieces, used by marketing, support, etc. This book came at just the right time for my organization. Moving from print to online, from books to mobile devices, tablets, iPads, etc. is a scary prospect. Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy give you the information, tools, and processes you need to plan and make the transition much easier and less worrisome.
    The authors argue for a unified, coherent content strategy that is multichannel and multidevice. Content should be reusable on any device for different purposes so that users get a consistent message. By designing the content for reuse, it is much easier to assemble it for different needs. It can save resources and help your content keep it fresh and up-to-date.
    Thinking about our content, business needs, and current strategy, helped us become more efficient and more responsive to company needs. It’s also helped us to start getting other groups involved in content creation and curation.
    You don’t need to follow the very useful eight phase checklist for implementing the unified content strategy to the letter. Instead, use it as a guide and make modifications to fit your needs as we did.
    I can’t find a fault with anything in this book. It has proven so useful I’ve been recommending it to friends in other companies.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Fri May 21 00:00:00 EDT 2004

    Review of Managing Enterprise Content

    Are you overwhelmed with the need to create more content, faster, customized for more customers, and for more media than ever before? Do you consider storing documentation on a server as an effective a content management system? Do you want to learn how content management will empower your organization? The answer to these questions and many more is covered in Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy by Ann Rockley with Pamela Kostur and Steve Manning of The Rockley Group. The Rockley Group is one of the leading providers of content management methodologies. Managing Enterprise Content provides concepts, strategies, guidelines, processes, and technical options that will prepare you to meet the increasing demands of creating, managing, and distributing content. It describes techniques that will help you define your content management requirements, build your vision, design your content architecture, select tools, and overcome obstacles of managing enterprise content. It will help you to visualize the spectrum of enterprise content, the requirements for effectively creating, managing, and delivering content, and the value of developing a content strategy for your organization. That¡¦s a lot of information for one person to understand. That¡¦s why the book is written for three audiences: content managers, information architects, and authors. Managing Enterprise Content follows the same methodical approach that Rockley uses to teach content management in seminars and workshops. I was expecting the book to jump into the technologies to implement a content management system. But that¡¦s not how Rockley presents content management. She begins with The basis of a unified content strategy and describes how content is created, who creates it, why authors work in isolation, and the consequences of isolation and centralizing content. The solution is to consolidate content in a definitive source, and a process that encourage authors to work collaboratively. The next step is to assess opportunities for content reuse. If you have never heard the term ¡¥reusing content,¡¦ you may know it as single sourcing. You probably already reuse content (i.e. copy and paste), which works well until the information, and everywhere that it appears, must be updated. Content reuse involves using existing content components (e.g. paragraphs, sections, and chapters) to develop new documents. Implementing a unified content strategy is a costly investment: tools, technologies, and training are not cheap. Investment costs are incurred in technology, training and consulting, and lost productivity. Examples are given to calculate the cost of authoring tools, content management systems, training and consulting¡Xa content management system is not a plug and play, one size fits all solution. The return on investment is achieved by reduced time to market, reduced cost of product content development, improved accuracy and quality of content, and reduced manufacturing defects. The examples are especially helpful because you will need to create a proposal to convince budget holders and management on the return on investment of a content management solution. Are you ready to buy a content management system? Not yet, read further. ¡§Performing a substantive audit: Determining business requirements¡¨ begins with an introduction on how to determine goals that you want a unified content strategy to solve, for example: ¿h Reduce the time to plan, write, review, approve, and publish ¿h Create flexible content that is easily reused to create information products for multiple products and multiple media ¿h Reduce the cost of translation by reusing existing translations. ¿h Make content more accessible; separating content from format makes it possible for content to be displayed automatically in a format appropriate to the disability. Rockley describes how to identify opportunities where a unified approach of content management (i.e. planning,

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Feb 03 00:00:00 EST 2003

    Buy this book!

    In "Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy," Ann Rockley explains a very complex subject in refreshingly human terms. Like a physician, she believes that pain is information. Acute problems in your content management and authoring processes cause pain. "Deadlines are missed, content is inconsistent, content is missing ... and customers complain." Rockley helps you systematically identify "where it hurts," then walks you through the recovery process. This process leads you to a unified content strategy, which ensures that "information is created, managed, and delivered consistently, in the way that users need it, without duplicating your efforts." Rockley succeeds in making a very complex subject appear simple. She clearly commands her material. Despite the encyclopedic level of detail found in the book, it is obvious that Rockley is not reaching for information. Rather than pointing to abstract paradigms from a safe distance, she matter-of-factly breaks them into bite-sized scenarios that can easily be understood by readers new to the subject. Rockley drives each point home with concrete example and case studies from the real world. Many readers will recognize their own companies and departments in her examples. Rockley does not present a "one size fits all" content strategy. Instead, she shows you how to ask and answer the right questions for your organization. And she provides straightforward checklists that make it easy for you to implement each step of the process. In so doing, she presents you with a flexible and scalable framework you can use to solve your own problems. Before you spend a lot of money on content management systems or consulting fees, buy this book. Rockley provides you with the kind of expert consulting that results from decades of experience, and normally comes at a very high price. In effect, she gives away the store.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Sun Feb 02 00:00:00 EST 2003

    Managing Enterprise Content manages its content beautifully!

    When I began to read the book Managing Enterprise Content, I had certain questions about what a unified content strategy was. Was it simply a repackaging of the old concepts of knowledge management or one source? Or was it something more? I also had the expectation that the book itself would address technical communicators only as its primary audience. This in itself is not bad, but in terms of ¿evangelical changes¿ to corporate documentation and training strategies, often ¿how to¿ books of this genre do nothing more than ¿preach to the choir.¿ By the time I finished reading Managing Enterprise Content, I was excited! For me, the book answered questions about a unified content strategy on two levels: Not only did it address unified content strategy as a strategic business objective; it also unified the strategic directions that the umbrella of technical communication and training professions have been moving towards over the past decade: single-sourcing, corporate branding implementation, critical involvement in software or system development life cycle (SDLC) methodologies, and even implementation of ISO9000 compliance. Please allow me to explain further: * Unified content strategy is the next evolution of ¿one source.¿ Unified content strategy itself is a ¿single-sourcing umbrella solution¿ to ensure timely, consistent, and cost-effective communication at all levels for your company¿s goods and services. Consistent means just that: the development and implementation of consistent communications, regardless of the number of creators (authors) or the number and types of output media. * Unified content strategy is about brand implementation. In today¿s marketplaces, I believe that effective branding can ¿make or break¿ a company. You may have the better proverbial mousetrap, but if your customers do not know it, it won¿t matter. VHS versus Beta illustrated this. * A unified content strategy merges the single-source concepts and the driving tenets behind ISO 9000 into a single, cohesive strategy. * Interestingly, a unified content strategy provides the methodology for developing the typical methodology deliverables required of a SDLC (software development life cycle). Until this, typical development projects let design drive content consistency, which would only be a byproduct if the project was lucky enough to have information designers as part of the team from the ¿get-go.¿ The book Managing Enterprise Content does a beautiful job of defining the premises and corresponding values of a unified content strategy. But it does not stop there. With this publication, finally there is a book that defines one source (as a unified content strategy) holistically, answering all of the basic journalistic questions of who, what, when, where, why, and most important, how! * The ¿how¿ itself is through easy-to-follow step by step instructions supported by examples that encapsulate very typical business scenarios. * The ¿how¿ is about getting buy-in within your company of not only management, but of all the players. It provides tables and lists of questions to be answered, objectives to be met, and pitfalls to be avoided. * The ¿how¿ is also about getting the best mix of tools and technologies to meet your company¿s needs, especially by helping you ferret out the real strengths and weaknesses of third-party tools in terms of meeting your company¿s business requirements. In my opinion, here is the real proverbial ¿bang for your buck¿ offered by Managing Enterprise Content. The book itself provides a cohesive tool for technical communicators, instructional designers, and related publications and project management to help demonstrate the cost benefits of a unified content management strategy. In short, this book tells you not only how to do it, but how to get buy-in. Or, in terms of the vernacular of the book itself, it tells you how to qualify your goals (something that we typically have always been good

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Mon Mar 10 00:00:00 EST 2003

    Authoritative Study but Reads like a Thesis

    Managing Enterprise Content covers content management strategies from A to Z. It is an authoritative guide on the subject. With that stated, this book assumes the readers have very little knowledge in content management. It is written into 6 parts and follows a 'unified' content strategy approach. It initially describes the pitfalls within content management, namely content silos. As an architect for content management systems, I have a vested interest with increasing my experiences and knowledge in content management. It would have been nice to see real life examples and situations throughout this book. Chapter 10 did provide some mocked up scenerios for content design. Furthermore, the writing style was too dry. Without the real life examples, it was more like the theory of enterprise content management. It's an excellent study in content management, but I prefer a first person writing style and some solid real life examples.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Thu Jan 16 00:00:00 EST 2003

    Managing Enterprise Content: The Secrets To Success

    If you¿re wondering what all the hoopla about enterprise-wide content management is about, look no further than Ann Rockley¿s new book, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy. This book contains more than 500 pages describing a systemic method for defining, evaluating, and preparing for an enterprise-wide content management program that can actually benefit a company¿s bottom line. If you¿re currently involved in bringing content management to your enterprise, or if you¿re getting ready to implement soon, you¿ll certainly want to pick up a copy of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy. And if you¿re just starting to think about what an unified content solution could mean for your company, this book is an essential resource for understanding the entire process from conceptualization to implementation.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Fri Jan 17 00:00:00 EST 2003

    A New Content Management Classic

    Ann Rockley's broad experience in the thought and practice of enterprise content management shines in this primer for anyone interested in ways to think about, plan and implement a unified content strategy. The book is an excellent introduction to the benefits of breaking down the walls between authoring groups (silos), and to the (big!) potential ROI of planned content reuse from both financial and resourcing standpoints. Rockley examines types of reuse, and demonstrates why you MUST manage your content. She provides practical examples, and details a comprehensive approach to plan, develop and implement a unified content strategy. And she doesn't sugarcoat the real growing pains that are involved. If you've never heard of enterprise content management, read this book for a new way of thinking that can save your company time and money. And if you're a frustrated veteran of the trenches, read it for a comprehensive and practical guide to developing a content strategy that works.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted Thu Jul 12 00:00:00 EDT 2012

    No text was provided for this review.

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