SDL LiveContent 2011 Death of Technical Documentation as we know it

This catchy SDL marketing release title (see http://is.gd/qc8yhG) has cost me a certain amount of time.

First of all, reading the release whetted my appetite for more information. So, I followed the SDL link to read the white paper and a case study. Frankly at the end, except for one brief phrase hidden in a mass of verbiage, I wasn't very much wiser. Was LiveContent a tool, a framework, a platform, software as a service or what? In terms of the technical documentation that you would write and publish using it, was it single sourcing, a structured authoring environment, minimalism, a content value chain or what? Is it web-based, client-server, a content management system, component content management or what?

I quickly learned that SDL considers it to be nothing less than a paradigm shift. I wonder how many products have made that claim in the last twenty years? The main white paper was perhaps the most informative of the three documents. However, in SDL's depiction of the supposed paradigm shift, publishing technical information before the shift would have only taken place in siloes, each impervious to the other. These siloes are presented very convincingly as if this view of things is the only one that could possibly be true. Trouble is, it isn't the only one. It's an exaggeration of just one tendency out of many, and one that I doubt ever existed in such an extreme form. We learn, for example, that Product Marketing, Product managers, technical writers and support personnel wrote respectively, specifications, design information, product documentation and support information, all for varying publics.

This does not correspond to my own experience at all. Technical documentation can come under the remit of the CTO or of Product Marketing, or can be split up under the aegis of the various product managers. Support identifies documentation errors and gaps, and communicates them to the technical writing team, which corrects them or extends the documentation. Nothing like setting up straw dogs to prove your point, is there?

Obviously, publishing technical information has been gradually moving in the direction sketched out in the white paper for years. So, although there are certainly trends in technical documentation, the existence of a paradigm shift is far from obvious. Certainly, any shift, whether a radical one like a "paradigm shift" or a gradual one, relies on far more than - as suggested in the SDL marketing material - tools.

Tools alone, without methods and procedures, mean nothing. They allow us to implement our methods and procedures, but nothing more. And trying to use them without solid methods and procedures that are reviewed on a regular basis can lead to catastrophe.

Given the industry trend and the time scale that it's taking place in, it will come as no surprise that SDL LiveContent is only one solution out of many. There are also Bluestream, Componize for Alfresco, DITA Exchange built on top of Sharepoint, Ixiasoft's TEXTML server and DITA CMS? Interestingly, each solution takes a different approach. This could well mean that one of them may offer tools similar to the ones that you already use, thereby reducing the learning curve.

In this context, what is LiveContent's USP? Identifying and explaining the USP from a technical standpoint should be the goal of any white paper, and the case studies provided along with it should support this
message clearly. Not to do so and, at the same time, to make radical unsupported claims is to oversell. A very risky tactic indeed. Since SDL acquired Tridion a few years ago, they have had the potential to be a leader in this area. If they have indeed realized this potential, let them communicate their leadership to us clearly.