Intelligent Content: My latest battle between doing it right and getting people to buy off on it.

So lately I've found myself in a daily tug-of-war.  The battle has been between using some really cool technologies to set up some team processes which would save time, improve our efficiency, reduce redundancy, ..., and a number of other benefits which I just wont get too involved with listing... and Microsoft Office.  Right. This ought to be a no-brainer. However, the teammates I'm trying to convince REALLY like to stay traditional.  Let's throw the customer and parts of management in there too.  You'd think that being engineers we'd all favor efficiency but somehow tradition has been winning. :(


Let me explain why -


Most people like what they are familiar with.
Most people don't like to learn new tools.
Most people feel that if they managed to do it one way before and it didn't hurt too much... why not do it that way again?


Ok I'm stereotyping but this is really frustrating.  As a general rule I'm all for doing things right the first time.  I understand there are special cases when we need to sacrifice a little efficiency in order to get things out the door, but really, when it comes down to balancing time, cost, schedule, quality, and efficiency... I plead, don't completely zero out the last two because you don't feel like starting a tiny revolution with some new tech! Be Brave! Stand Out!


Right about now you'd expect me to explain the tech I've been trying to foster into existence with my team, but... why do it if it's already been done?  If I can't be anti-redundancy at work, I'll at least stand firm with my blog.  In short, I speak of the DITA OASIS Standard, an XML architecture for designing, writing, managing, and publishing information.


Here's a link to their community website: http://dita.xml.org/


A link to a little more of a conceptual presentation is:
http://idratherbewriting.com/2008/11/24/what-constitutes-intelligent-content-interview-with-ann-rockley/


With this I want to give my full endorsement that this is some really great stuff that every team that does documentation should at least consider.