Migration DIY

The project to migrate our content from our current tool to a new Content Management System is ongoing.

The system is installed and we are beginning to use it. Our goal is to migrate content between deadlines, so that we do not disturb the release process of the software products.

Migrating the content ourselves is a lot of work, but we discovered some benefits to the extra work.

Know the Content

We recently had personnel changes, so projects were moved around. Rewriting and reformatting allows the writers to really learn what content is in the projects. When done, they have gained valuable knowledge about what is written and what areas need additional writing.

Clean the Content

Because we know our products, we can assess the topics and update accordingly. We were able to clean the content during the reformatting into DITA, so this is more of an extension of that process. We are able to focus on what the customer needs and verify that our content contains the information in a clear way.

Reuse the Content

As we work with the content, we can find pieces of content that we can reuse: the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that we use over and over. Often the words are not exact, and setting them up for reuse creates standard terminology.

We are building the libraries for these reuse items, and communicating it to the other tech writers. As we solidify the content in the new system, we will invite other teams to use chunks of the content.

It will take over a year to migrate all the content. But once we finish, we will have clean, strong content, and the writers will truly know the content. Those benefits are worth the effort of migrating the content ourselves.