At some point in a company’s product development process, the developers – often engineers – realize that they have a content ‘problem’: specifications and customer content work takes a lot of time! Each engineering team member is expected to create and publish the content that explains the technology they have created, yet some often lack the equivalent level of expertise in content creation that they possess in their engineering roles. As a result, they tend to burn a lot of evenings and weekends wrestling with content issues. In many cases, they report to their managers that content duties are increasing the overall product development cycle time.
So the manager brings in a technical writer. OK, this person improves the content but … is this the solution to the content problem? What’s the solution? Engineers are smart people and, if 20 engineers are involved, you’ll have at least 20 opinions about content requirements and solutions.
At PTIGlobal, our Technical Communications (TechCom) experts have encountered this scenario many times. We have defined a Content Solution Equation that has proven to be highly effective for any engineering team and can scale across a very large enterprise. Let’s jump right into the variables in the solution equation and introductory descriptions.
SOLUTION = Content Types + Authoring Tools + Repository + Roles + Processes + People + Governance
Equation Variables Descriptions:
Content Types: The required and optional unique document sections and/or topic types such as chapters, sections, subsections – the content outlines – all tailored to meet consumer’s usage models.
Authoring/Illustrating/Publishing tools: Best tools or available tools for creating and editing text, tables, illustrations, PDFs, HTML, or other formats.
Repository: A file or content management system that all participants use to manage revisions and archives. A reliable repository and consistent methods are a cornerstone of a good content reuse strategy.
Roles: Definitions of the various roles and tasks associated with the content duties of co-plan, co-develop, edit, reuse, reposit, publish/deliver.
Processes: Instructions for how all the participants perform the roles and tasks.
People: Appropriately skilled subject matter and content experts who are willing and able to work within this type of solution.
Governance: Prescriptive documented methods for all the above that are maintained for ‘freshness’ (always kept up to date).
Might such a solution help you increase your efficiency and improve content quality? If so, contact us for more information!
