5 posts tagged with "Migration"

Looking for the service page? This post is the thinking behind the approach. For scope, transform rules, and pricing, see MadCap Flare conversion — or MadCap Flare migration services for the full project view.

A MadCap Flare conversion is usually treated as a logistics problem — move content from the old tool to the new one, preserve formatting, hit the deadline. That approach guarantees you will carry every structural problem from the old system into the new one. The migration is your best opportunity to fix what was always broken. Here is how to use it.

Most Flare migrations technically succeed. The content moves from the old system to the new one. Builds run. Outputs generate. Everyone declares victory. But six months later, writers are slower than before, builds take twice as long as they should, and nobody trusts the conditions. The migration didn't fail — it just deferred every structural decision to the future, and the future has arrived.

Moving from DITA to MadCap Flare is not a simple file conversion. It is an architecture change — from a topic-based XML standard with maps and specializations to a topic-based XML editor with its own structural model. Getting the files across is the easy part. Getting the architecture right is what determines whether the migration succeeds or creates a new set of problems.

Every RoboHelp to Flare migration looks straightforward on paper. Flare even has a built-in RoboHelp import wizard. But the projects that come out the other side almost always need significant cleanup, and the problems are predictable if you know where to look.

Roughly 80% of MadCap Flare migrations run over budget, over schedule, or deliver a project that is harder to maintain than the system it replaced. That is not because Flare is the wrong tool. It is because the migration was treated as a conversion project when it should have been treated as an architecture project.