Lessons From An AI-Assisted Content Migration
Cisco, September 30,2025
Discussion of AI is all around us, but in my experience, practical guidance rooted in specific use cases is surprisingly rare. After spending months deep in the weeds of a massive documentation migration with AI as my assistant, I've learned some hard-won lessons that I think others could benefit from.
If you work in content engineering, technical documentation, or are simply curious about how AI holds up in a complex, real-world project, here's my take on what worked and what didn't.
Project Context
I'm a DITA Information Architect on the Information Experience team at Splunk. DITA, short for Darwin Information Typing Architecture, is an open, XML-based standard for structuring and managing technical content.
We recently wrapped up the migration of three large documentation sites into a single help portal, powered by a DITA-based component content management system (CCMS). The timeline was tight, and nearly all of the resources were internal. The migrations were complex and significant to the business, requiring careful planning and execution.