One of the things we do with anyone learning DITA is to do Topic Triage. The point of the exercise is to get experience identifying DITA topics in unstructured content, including mixed content types.
The end result of topic triage is an authoring style guide and deep understanding of your content. What topics should always be considered Reference topics? Which ones are Concept? Where does an “Overview” fall?
They’re not always cut and dried nor easy to identify. We developed the attached worksheets to help.
You can use the worksheet to list titles (chapters, sections, subsections) to start getting a handle on your own content. You can also write brief statements of definition so that when someone new joins your team, they know how to map technical content into DITA topics the same way as the rest of your team.
This exercise becomes the starting point for your Authoring Style Guide.
Download the worksheets: