Last week a commenter on another blog asserted that DITA has "jumped the shark." It's not a new idea. I've heard other people say that DITA has already seen its best days, that it's struggling to remain relevant in a world that's passed it by. I was amused, I admit, because it was the first time I'd seen DITA compared to a TV show.

Still, it was a serious statement and it merits a serious response.

While it's true that DITA is sometimes overhyped, here's why I think it has a long and bright future.

One of the most talked-about technical communication trends for the 2010s is community-based content: the realization that content comes from all over the enterprise, not just from the technical writing department, and from outside the enterprise (customers and end users) as well.

But all of this community-based content needs to be organized and formatted it in a consistent, usable way. DITA is great for this because it's based on XML. Content can be tagged for the semantic Web, and formatting styles can be applied without modifying the content itself.

While the industry hasn't settled on a good DITA-wiki combination, it's likely that one will emerge. Such a tool will make it practical for everyone to contribute content, whether or not they know a specific text editor or text processor, and for the content to be formatted in a consistent fashion according to the enterprise's requirements.

Moreover, DITA is a great fit for another hot trend: Agile software development. With DITA, a documentation team can generate review drafts more easily because the review is based on a few topics rather than on a whole document. The team can also respond readily to plan changes, because the topics are built for reuse and can be moved around and reassembled as needed.

Finally, DITA is a standard. It can grow in whatever directions the community wants to take it.

So, no. DITA hasn't jumped the shark, and in fact it's well positioned to flourish in the 2010s.