bookmark_borderA New Normal

I’m currently cruising high in the sky above the USA, on my way from San Francisco to Boston. It’s part of a whistle stop tour of two of our offices here which have teams of software engineers, architects and product managers (no technical writers though) that are building part of the product we will be shipping early next year.
During a chat with a couple of the product managers there was an interesting revelation. In describing the approach the team takes when it comes to writing documentation, the two product managers both smiled with relief when I said that we didn’t really spend much time on simple procedures, instead we try and concentrate on the why, on decision support information. We work with the support team to catch any areas of the product which are causing problems with a view to improving the documentation in that area as well, and overall we understand that the people using the development platform are usually smart, technically minded people, so we ask smart, technical questions of our development team.

The thing is, that’s not really a revelation for me. It’s something we’ve been doing for quite a while now, so much so that I can forget that for a lot of people the term “product documentation” is often seen to be fairly rote task-based, step by step procedures with little in the way of explanation.

Whilst that’s handy when you are still learning a new product, pretty soon that information becomes useless.

Thinking further, the decisions we are making during our current restructure project reflect this thinking as well. One step that was very interesting was asking some of the given audience of our product (our own developers and professional services staff) to do a card sort of some of the topics. They all have a mental model in their heads of how the product (and so the supporting information) is structured. Anything outside of that was a real problem for them to deal with.

It’s that problem area where asking why, and producing supporting information that helps the user understand how something works is far more important than simply telling them which buttons to click.

Since our companies merged we’ve had a lot of discussions and sessions to help the other engineering teams get up to speed with our platform, it’s been a bit of a rude awakening if I’m honest, as there is a lot of knowledge still floating around in the heads of some of our developers.

So it looks like the task next year will be to change that, to make information and the dissemination of it much more a key part of the software engineers thinking. I’m not quite sure how we are going to manage it but I do know that we have to create a new normal where information sharing, product information and an understanding of who is using our product needs to be much more front and centre in our thinking and our working processes.

bookmark_borderEverything is too much

For the last few months, the team have been rebuilding and restructure our content. We’ve ditched the idea of ‘guides’ for now (although we will revisit those early next year) and after a lot of hard work we are starting to build out new groupings of content. The process has involved a lot of analysis, and we’ve had a few nice little wins on the way, for example; we started using Mindmaps as a way to visualise the content and will be rolling them out as part of our normal planning in the future.

This is the 1000 feet view of what we are building:

And that’s not quite everything…

It’s been a long journey to get to this point, and I admit I have some fear that all of this information is too big to know.

However, we know that the majority of people use search to find content in our system (we publish to WebHelp and host on a developer community website) so I’m confident that with our new structure, which includes a lot more signposting and navigation, the content will be much more usable.

One of the mindset changes was moving away from worrying about product manuals as a construct, it’s very freeing but also quite scary. That said, there has been a lot of work in validating the approach we have taken so we are confident in the approach, even though there has been more work than we originally anticipated (do not under estimate the creation of navigation topics).

Will it work? I think it will, although I’m aware there are likely some gaps that will be exposed that we will need to fill. We will try and plug those as we go along of course, but once this is in place we can start to look at other content. As I mentioned previously, we provide other content types (PreSales overviews of the product, for example) and at some point next year we will go through this exercise on that set of information as well. Thankfully it’s much smaller!

bookmark_borderStealth Mode

I don’t know about you but I’m getting fed up trying to make everyone realise the value of what we do. Technical Communicators of the world unite!

Why is it so darn hard? Isn’t it obvious? We live in a so-called “information age” after all, so why is it such a struggle to get the message across?

So, for the meantime, I’ve stopped.

My team currently has a separate stream of work looking at how we get better at PR and whilst that runs its course I’ve decided to deploy a different tactic, one which has fallen into my lap. No more will I go cap in hand to department heads, no more will I try to coax, nudge and cajole others into understanding why product information is so important. I won’t roll out the usual reasons, and I will save my “part of the product life-cycle” spiel.

You see, we’ve been receiving requests from different parts of the organisation, based on some work we did in the past. Lots of people are looking for help. At the moment, all of the team are busy but I’m going to pick one of the requests and find a way to get it actioned. That way we will get a quick win and increase our profile a little (it really is great to be part of such a good team, their work speaks for itself) and it should give us an ‘in’, an opportunity to build a relationship with a different part of the business, learn how they work and in time expand what we do as part of our service to them.

Land and expand. Simple really.

At present I know there are many areas of the company producing content. I also know that many of them would benefit from our input, just as I know we don’t currently have the resource and, without a lot of up front research I’m not sure I would be able to guess at what resource would be required to cover the current requirements. Creating the business case to expand operations would take time, and even then a lot of the effort goes into educating people as to why consistent, reliable, re-usable product information is a “good thing”.

With that in mind, getting a foot in the door (landing) before getting involved and agreeing a level of delivery for the future (expanding) seems the most sensible way forward. It allows us to get a feel for where we can best be involved and over time we can increase our influence, and standing, within the company.

Now, where I can buy some ninja costumes?

bookmark_borderHo Ho Holy Shit… December

I am having fun.

This must be true because time is flying, it seems like only yesterday we were wandering round Edinburgh Zoo! Since then, we’ve had gigs, trips to London and Manchester and, all of a sudden, it’s December and Christmas looms large.

Most years I’d take this week and next week to slowly get up to speed, get the cards written and posted, get the Christmas tree up, buy and wrap pressies and all that nonsense but unfortunately I’m already running out of time.

This week, I have this evening and Thursday evening free. Friday afternoon/evening is our team Xmas lunch which means Saturday will likely find me a little hungover and on Sunday, at around 6.30am, I’ll be at the airport ready to fly off for a week in the US of A. California for a couple of days, Massachusetts for a couple of days and then back home at 8am on the following Saturday… just in time for the Company Christmas Party that night!

It’s been a funny old year. Life has thrown some curveballs and in keeping with the well-known saying we made curveade… no, that’s not right… whatever, it’s been more ups and downs and as ever I wouldn’t change a thing, it’s all part of the journey.

As I’ve said to many others this past year, I’m happy. And that is all that really matters. I have a wonderful woman in my life who loves me, I have a good job, I have the best friends and a supportive family. It’s true, I’m a lucky son of a bitch!

Of course, that doesn’t mean things couldn’t be better. I’m still struggling to lose weight, I plateau’d around June but I’m taking some solace that it’s not gone back on, and I still can’t play the guitar.

Regardless, I feel like I know myself better. My sense of identity is stronger, and I feel like I’m finding my place in this weird world we live in.

I’ll admit it. It’s good to be me.

bookmark_borderSay Thank You

As some of you will now be aware, I am no longer writing my monthly Blog News column for the ISTC newsletter, InfoPlus+.

It actually started life here on this blog, every week (or so) I used to post a list of interesting posts and blogs and for a while there was an overlap but, eventually, I dropped the feature from the blog as the monthly approach gave me a little more scope to collect the best links and yes, I will admit I enjoyed the writing process that went with the column (believe me, it took me longer than you’d think).

Alas life continues to challenge my time so after not managing to submit my column for a couple of months (the shame!) I decided to make the hard decision and stop altogether. It doesn’t mean I’m not reading blogs any more, just that I’m not writing about them as much.

When it came to writing my final column, I checked back at when the column started and I was more than a little surprised to find out that it had been going for over 4 years! I’m quietly amazed it lasted that long, given my normal propensity to prefer tackling new things than sticking with current projects (I am a magpie).

There was one thing that I always struggled with though, and that was the lack of interaction, the lack of feedback. I had no idea if anyone was reading the column! The newsletter is published as a PDF and sent out via email so there are no stats to be viewed, in fact it was only at the Technical Communications Conference when a couple of people mentioned that they read it and, even better, they enjoyed it that I knew for a fact that it was worth writing. What a lovely little boost that gave my ego!

I most certainly wasn’t writing the column for that reason, in fact I’ll be honest and admit that I was writing it to try and boost my profile (I was also speaking at conferences and presenting webinars at the time) but that brief moment of adulation was very welcome. At least I think it was adulation… maybe they didn’t actually want me to autograph their conference programmes… hmmmmmmm.

I’ve been blogging for a long time so I guess I get a little blasé about feedback. Comments are great to see, I love the discussion aspect and the fact there is a passionate community of technical communicators who pop in here now and then, and if nothing else I can always check my stats to see that people are visiting the website (and presumably reading for they stay for a few minutes at a time), but being told face-to-face that someone has enjoyed something I’ve done, not much tops that.

It’s only now, reflecting on the fact that for the first month in 4 years I’m not starting to collate links and thoughts for the Blog News column, that I realise that saying thank you is something I’ve not done enough of, so let me start.

Thank you, dear reader.

Thank you for visiting and reading.

Thank you to those who visit, read and leave a comment, who join the discussion.

Thank to those who link to this blog, or retweet the link for others to see.

Thank you for taking the time.

I sincerely appreciate it.

Now, it’s your turn. No, I’m not looking for anyone to thank me, but take a moment and consider who you should be thanking, have you said thank you to them recently?

If not, now is the time. Go on, you will make someone’s day!

bookmark_borderInformation is not a commodity

The modern day technical writer, in fact I think we’ll go with technical communicator for this on, has a myriad of tools at their disposal. Be they authoring tools, publishing formats, or ways to collaborate, we are spoiled for choice. I can write content and make it available to the world in mere minutes if I so choose (and I do, frequently, you are reading it).

Of course, there is more to our job than the tools of our trade, so much more that at times I think we can forget that our value lies elsewhere and if we are forgetting that, can we really blame others for losing sight of it too? We are more than our knowledge of Microsoft Word, but I fear that’s not always apparent.

Working in a software company, I hear talk of the ‘quality of the code’ frequently, thankfully I hear similar comments about the product documentation, so where does the disconnect occur, how do our fellow professionals move from “those are the people who produce good quality product information” to “anyone can write product information” and, more importantly, how do we change that notion?

Part of the problem is that anyone can easily create and share information, better than that, they can collaborate with the author on that content. The people using the information can ask questions of the author directly, add their comments and even edit the content if it’s not correct. This is not new, Wikis have offered similar functionality for many years, yet somewhere along the line the value placed on information shifted from the quality of the content, to the functionality surrounding it.

  • Can I access it easily?
  • Can I leave a comment?
  • Can I send it to someone else?
  • Can I port it to another platform?

Some argue that information as a commodity raises the bar for us all, that by placing a value on information it allows us to be part of discussions we’ve struggled to gain access to in the past. Whilst that may be partly true, somewhere along the line we missed a grand opportunity.

Treating information as a commodity hides the real value and, worse, it places the high quality information we create into the same jumbled marketplace of content that we are all all too familiar with. As a commodity we have become just another coffee maker. Some people will seek out the best of such things, but the majority will not, they will seek the lowest cost and presume that, as it comes in a box that says ‘coffee maker’, it will meet their needs.

How do we change this?

The short answer is, we can’t. The horse has flown the cowshed (?!), the battle is lost.

However, that’s not to say the war is lost.

Good quality information will bubble to the top of the pile eventually. If your information is in a small pool, this will happen sooner rather than later. If you are concerned only with an internal audience you can help this happen by reaching out to other parts of your organisation to make them aware of what you are doing. If your information is in a larger pool, and you have to contend with other ‘google-able’ sources then you will need to do some leg work, some P.R.

This is not a new scenario and the very things that give us flexibility and power are also the things waiting to plot our downfall.

Information is a commodity. There is no escaping that fact.

But we are craftswomen, craftsmen of the highest order, and our knowledge and approach to information gives us an advantage that we shouldn’t be afraid to push home. Yes, all that other information is good, yes I’m sure it comes in handy now and then, but our information is something you can rely on, something that you can trust. It is honed, refined and delivered by experts.

Our information is not a commodity. It is a differentiator.

The sooner we all understand, and believe that, the better for us all.