Sarah O’Keefe has written a great blog post that made me think about tech comm professionals and perfection. I have to admit, I’m in the over 40 crowd that Sarah mentions but I’m not one to hold onto a deliverable output for the sake of a deliverable output. Her main point, however, stands.

Often, technical communication professionals fall in love with a deliverable format because it pleases the tech comm professional in some earthy happy way. Additionally, a lot of work may have gone into making that deliverable format look really nice. In a way, it becomes our child – fussed over, groomed, fed.

Then time marches on

And it’s hard to leave that child and move on to another child. If we do move to another deliverable, we want the new child to be as pretty and happy as the previous child, if not prettier.

But is this drive for perfection in the deliverables really helping anything? Do our customers really care if the entire deliverable is lovely to the eye?

Maybe. If you’re writing for a high end layout product, then I think your users care how lovely the docs look. But if you’re developing content for mining equipment or industrial automation, then I think the perfect layout delivery is probably not such an issue.

Close enough is good enough for most markets

I also don’t think we add value (generally) to the deliverable by tweaking and polishing the look  past a certain point. Yes, your content should be branded and legible. But making sure every line breaks with a certain elegance is overkill.

Worse, the time you spend to make the baby its most pretty is time you could have spent making the content useful.

Useful content or pretty content? I think our users will take useful every time.

All things being equal, our users care that they have the information that helps them do what they need to do. While the look of the content certainly adds to the usability of the content, making it look “perfect” is probably not needed. Nor can you or your users afford to have the look be perfect.

Consider letting go a little and making the value of your content be the content. That’s the value we add as professionals.

I was talking to a friend whose employer has merged with another company. My friend’s company spent the last 5 years clawing its way to supportable and repeatable processes throughout the company as they build software products. If you are familiar with the 5 levels of the Capability Maturity Model, they had finally reached something close to a level 4.

It was hard and they struggled but development, testing, and documentation had stable processes that supported consistently developing products.

Then the merger happened.

Post merger

As they bring the 2 companies together, they are also breaking the company into 2 parts, based on markets. The split is not based on previous company affiliation, but rather on the needs of each vertical market both companies sell into. It makes sense to break it up this way, because the products are related but the needs of each vertical are very different.

This could all be very good, except for one thing: the company they merged with has no actual product development processes.

And that could all work if Company A (my friend’s employer) consumed Company B. But that’s not what’s happening. As they break the companies apart and regroup into 2 separate business units, the processes of each company are staying in place. Those people who are moving into the business unit that was Company A get the existing and stable processes of Company A. Those who are moving into the business unit of what was Company B get all the processes of Company B, which is to say, none.

6 levels of the CMM

My friend and I have thought for years there are actually 6 levels of the CMM. We both discovered this level when we ran our own consulting companies. We also learned to identify and then run away when we first met with these potential clients because nothing good ever happened.

The 6th level is negative 1. Working with a negative 1 level will destroy your processes if you are a contracting company providing outsourcing services, like product documentation. Think of it as entropy.

There is a place for the negative 1 level – three people creating some wild new technology in a garage somewhere can actually benefit from this level because it strongly encourages crazy mad ideas that then get tried. These ideas would be shot down any other place because they are crazy mad ideas. But for these people in that garage, it’s a creative environment that works.

The moment these people move into any level of developing the crazy mad ideas into some actual products, level negative 1 will kill them. Perhaps slowly, perhaps quickly, but entropy will have it’s due.

And how do tools fit in here?

Very often, companies with few to no processes decide the problems they’re having are because they don’t have the right tools. If they got the right tools, they reason, this would all be better.

So they build a feature list.

And they buy new tools.

They don’t bother to train anyone, or set up any Best Practices for using the tools. They just buy them, install them, and then continue on the way they’ve been. And nothing changes, except some vendor somewhere got a nice fat check.

New tools are not feature lists

If you (or your company) are thinking about improving how you do the business of what you do, new tools can help a lot. But new tools also require that you look at your existing processes and be brave enough to change what isn’t working. And something isn’t working if you’re looking to get new tools.

Think of purchasing new tools as a time of reflection for your company. Identify what’s not working in your processes and then find tools that support your efforts to make it work better.

Don’t look for new tools based on a feature list – look for new tools based on the business problems you have and the business solutions you need. When you identify the business issues you need to solve, you’re going to be looking at processes as well. You can’t help it.

For most companies, the content they create is critical to the running of the business. Consider for a moment:

• Policies and procedures – state how the business is to be run, who does what and how. In industries with oversight, such as finance or medical, the business also must show auditors how the company has been running since the last audit. Failure to show this content can result in heavy fines or other bad things.
• Internal product documents – describe how products should work, the thought processes, the solutions, and so on for developing the products sold. Without these documents, a business has no idea how it builds what it builds. It also don’t know why decisions were made to do X rather than Y.
• External product documents – explain how to use the products to the people who purchase the products. If the external documents are not helpful, the business (at best) incurs an unreasonable support cost or (at worst) has a high return rate. Both impact available capital in the business. If the business functions in a regulated industry, it must keep the history of the external documents to show potential auditors how the product was described to work or potentially face large fines.
• Customer support documents – help internal support teams and external customers find a solution to their problems. For expensive internal support teams, quickly finding and understanding how to help a customer gets the customer off the phone and able to move forward. External customers who find a solution on the support site and never call is the ideal, as it costs the company less than pennies per customer.
• Training materials – few staff arrive knowing how the company works, what safety information they need to know, or how the products work. Training is how a company shares it’s tribal knowledge with the new tribe members. Many companies save a great deal of money on their insurance by making sure all new employees are trained in the required safety protocols. If the business needs to train customers on how the products work, the training center is a profit center.
• Marketing collateral – positions the products to the appropriate sales market. Few companies have a product so needed that no advertising is needed to sell the product. Failure to attract customers to the products negatively impacts the business.

Content as a business asset

The groupings above just touch on the broad types of content a business needs to manage. Even a small mom-and-pop store has some of the types of content listed above. For large international companies, the sheer amount of content assets, just as with hardware assets, for example, can be overwhelming.

Best of Breed companies know their business content is an asset that needs to be managed, just like the other assets in the company. Most companies track the computers and cell phones they use, for example. Annually, all the equipment is inventoried to make sure they have what they think they have.

Many companies never think about the business content as a business asset. The content that’s critical to the business is in Word or Powerpoint files or who knows, saved everywhere: on people’s local computers, somewhere on the network, maybe on a Sharepoint site. No one has any idea how much content they have, much less where it all is or what the most recent version might be.

If you ever wondered what Author-it products do, this is what we do. Our products help you manage your business content as the business asset it is.

In other news

We have a new line-up of free webinars coming your way in April and May. We’re really pleased with the offerings and hope you are too.

High on the list of must attends are 2 in particular:

Content Development: Future Trends, Future Solutions
Paul Trotter, CEO of Author-it Software Corporation shares his vision of the future in this hour long event. You’ll leave knowing what trends are and what you need to prepare for now.
April 25 at 4pm Eastern time.  To sign up for this tools-neutral webinar, click here.

What’s New in Author-it 5.5
Additionally, we have several webinars scheduled to show you what’s coming in Author-it 5.5. To see the times and dates, click here.

I, like most geeks, am always happy to learn more about space programs. Recently several friends went to Houston and the Space Center there. They met astronauts and did other things I’m deeply envious about.

One of my friends took pictures of the documentation for the space shuttles that I thought I’d share. Click here to see the pictures.

Why do we care?

The shuttle people are very smart people. So the actual instructions are probably written at a high level of knowledge because you can trust these smart people to know a lot.

But what I found interesting was, as my friend wrote,

the formatting and layout of these. The books are printed in a large, san-serif font on card stock. The binding is open rings, so they’ll lay flat without any argument. Remember that 95% of the time, these are going to be in zero-G, so any slight tendency of a book to snap shut (from a perfect binding that would normally be fighting against gravity) would cause the book to close.

The page layout is very loose and open, and could be written on with a pencil easily. The blue tape is velcro (NASA just lives for velcro!). As you can see in some of the later pix inside the shuttle simulator, the books are velcroed in place everywhere so they can be seen easily.

Audience is everything, except when environment is everything

So, not only do we need to think about what information  our users need, we also need to think about how and when they will be using this information. Most of us are not designing information to be used in space, but what an interesting problem to solve. And what an ugly but perfect solution they found. (You have to admit, the blue velcro is ugly but very visible.)

Talk about tailoring the information delivery to the needs of the audience!

What unusual environmental information delivery problems have you solved?

WritersUA in Long Beach last week was fun. We met a lot of people in the booth and at the show in general. I got to see our product demo-ed by a fellow who has been showing our products for years and that was a huge learning experience for me. He’s very good.

Author-it Morning was a blast. We had more people than we thought attending and everyone was excited and interested. For half the morning, we threw out our stated agenda and did what the audience wanted to see. One attendee said the morning made the entire show worth her while. Good stuff.

Peer showcases

One of the things I really like about WritersUA is the Peer Showcase event. It’s usually the last day in the food and drink area, making it available to everyone. Selected people get to show something interesting they’re doing and answer questions about it. I sat in a demo by a lovely woman who is creating, on average, 1 user guide a day using Author-it. The way she has everything set up so that she swaps out what needs to swap out and then clicks Publish had me amazed.

She uses Release States for product lines. So, for example, content that is common to all manuals are set to one release state with a color. Content that is specific to each product line is set to other release states and colored differently. That lets her see at a glance what belongs to what. I would never have thought of that and it’s a perfect solution to the problems in her workflow.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

While I watched her talk about how she did what she did, I realized that Author-it lets the 2 writers do the work of 4 writers. Talk about doing more with less! The ROI for this group of writers was measured in days, I think. And, she said, the rock solid publishing profiles meant that she always got what she expected in the output, saving hours a week in production review.

People swarmed around her table, amazed by the workload and the solution.

Local sightings

I’ll be at the Silicon Valley STC chapter March 24 for a preview of Author-it and other fun stuff, if you’re in the area. I’d love to see you there!

If you’re working in a typical document-centric content development environment, you probably manage versions of product documents by copying the entire previous document(s), renaming to the next version and go from there. While this seems like a good way to manage versions, problems can arise, including how to find and manage all the copies floating around your source control or internal network.

And if you need to compare what content applies to what version, life gets really complicated. You can use the built-in document compare but for some products, variables and cross references count as changed text, not really giving you the picture you need.

You could always print out the compared document and do a line by line manual highlight of the actual changes. Unless the document is more than about 100 pages because who has time to do that for the 30 documents you produced 3 versions ago? And then you’re stuck with paper trails you need to manage. It’s a very cumbersome process.

There has to be a better way

A better way would to be able to assign a version to the content when you create it. That would at least show you somehow that this topic was added for version 3.1 and that content appeared in version 4. You would have some sort of audit trail to see what appeared or changed and when.

Building the output could get complicated, though. If you want just the content that applies to version 4, you would have to somehow include the content that didn’t change since version 2. But you don’t want the version 3.1 content, just the content for version 4 and the content that hasn’t changed since version 2.

You would have to mark content as valid for version 2 and 3 and 4 and 4.1 and… That sounds cumbersome, too.

Maybe an even better way

An even better way would be if you could somehow specify you want version 4 and the publishing system programatically looked for all version 4 content and gathered that up. For content that isn’t marked version 4, but appears in the list of content you want to publish, maybe the system could walk back versions to find content.

That way, the system tracks things down and you don’t have to manually assign multiple versions to the content, which you’re going to forget to do.

Computers are really good at tracking things. Why don’t we let them do that part and we can create the content?

It’s a better way

Environments that are regulated, such as financial or medical, should like this approach. This even better way of versioning let’s you easily create the documents as they were for each point in time so the auditors can easily see what they need.

Environments where your technology has a long life span might also like this versioning method. For example, if your technology is still in the field and still working 20 years later, you may need to create documents for it on request, even though that version is 20 years old. With this even better way of managing versions, it’s not a problem – simply specify the version to start with and the system does the rest.

Sound interesting?

By Sharon Burton

Some days, your technology works for you and some days I think it’s out to get us. Today has been a bad technology day for me. I’m hoping it gets better as the day goes on.

Managing stress

When I’m stressed, I’m learning to go for a walk to help me manage myself. Just because I’m stressed doesn’t mean the world is actually coming to an end. I’m finally learning that walking a mile helps a lot. Especially if the day is pretty and the sky is blue – it’s hard to remember what I was stressed about when I get back.

I also find I’m more productive if I get up from my desk and walk a fast mile. When I come back, my mind is usually clearer and I feel refreshed. I can get a new outlook on something that gives me a breakthrough.

The content authoring/publishing world

Our field can be very stressful. We are a deadline-driven industry with lots of things clamoring for our attention.

Long gone are the days with one project and one thing to do all day long. Most of us have too much work for the time available and somehow we make it all happen. People show up in our offices with surprise projects that must be done right now!

But what does all this do to your stress levels?

Long term stress is bad for you

Study after study shows it’s not good for the body to be constantly flooded with stress chemicals. Additionally, it’s really not good to manage stress by over-eating or over-drinking. Nothing happy comes from either choice.

So, this year, finally, I’m learning to walk off my stress. On the weekends, I walk one of my large dogs at least 2.5 miles every day, which is great for both of us. But I’m not limiting myself to weekend walking. If I need to get out of the office for 20 minutes, I walk a mile.

What are you doing to keep your stress levels managed? How do you relax and redirect your mind?

WritersUA

One way to recharge your mind and body is to attend a conference. It’s good to get out of the office and into a creative group as passionate about our field as you are.

Remember, the WritersUA conference is March 13 to March 16. Additionally, Author-it is holding an Author-It Morning half day event Sunday, March 12 from 9am to noon at the conference location.

Sign up by sending me an email to sharon[dot]burton[at]author-it[dot]com with Author-it Morning in the subject line.

We’ll see you there!

By Sharon Burton

After a webinar the other day, I would up chatting in email with a fellow about useful books. So I thought I’d post a list of books I think should be on your bookshelf.

Listed in no particular order:

• Illustrating Computer Documentation: The Art of Presenting Information Graphically on Paper and Online by William Horton

Altho this book was published in 1991, it’s still very relevent today. He covers how to present information visually, especially important for us non-visual learners.

• DITA 101, 2nd edition. by Ann Rockley

Even if you’re not moving to DITA, this book is valuable because it makes you think about how to structure your information to be useful to your readers.

• Information Development: Managing Your Documentation Projects, Portfolio, and People by Joann T. Hackos

I cannot recommend this book enough. She clearly discusses why content is a business asset and how to manage it.

• Single Sourcing: Building Modular Documentation by Kurt Ament

Do you have any to add to the list? What have I missed?

Since the awful earthquake in New Zealand this week, clients and non-clients all over the world have contacted us, concerned about our staff. This outpouring has moved everyone at Author-it and we’d like to thank all of you.

The Auckland office and all our people in that office are OK. The earthquake was about 400 miles away. All family in the Christchurch area have been accounted for.

Remember, if you want to help the people in Christchurch, contributing to the New Zealand Red Cross is a great way to help.

On a related note

Have you looked at your policies and procedures lately? When a disaster like this happens, it should remind us that we need effective policies and procedures in place. Everyone needs to be trained in what to do.

Make sure yours includes:

• Evacuation plans
• Disaster recovery plans
• Reporting-in plans
• and more

Disasters usually happen suddenly. It’s important for everyone to know what they should do and how to keep the business running (or not) during the disaster.

People at least need to know how to get out of the building and where to meet. If the disaster happens at lunch, do you have a plan in place for people to report in so the missing can be quickly accounted for? Do several people have the cell phone numbers for everyone? Where are those number stored? How is the data in your company being managed for offsite backups? Do you even do offsite backups?

These and more need to be clearly defined so everyone knows what to do. Now might be a very good time to make sure your policies and procedures are up-to-date and people are trained.

If you didn’t go to the Intelligent Content conference in Palm Springs last week, you really missed out.

I was holding down the booth and talking to people so I didn’t get to much of the sessions but the ones I did attend were great.

And they made me think about where our field is heading.

Content as a business asset

Content is starting to be thought of as the business asset it always has been. It has the potential to inform and educate our customers. This includes our technical content, such as product instructions and knowledge bases.

Additionally, our users are creating content. Think forums, blogs, etc. Some of this content is fantastically useful to our users and needs to be included somehow into the “official” content. How to do that for your specific organization is an interesting question.

The future

Now, if you’re a content development professional, you may be panicking at the thought of your users writing the content and you become a line editor. I think that’s an over-reaction.

I think we are poised to move into part content creator and part community manager. And I think this is a good move. We are not the keepers of all things worth knowing – our users are also very smart people who figure out stuff we didn’t think of. And we should be open to this input.

Additionally, think of all the content you’d love to create if only you had the time. Perhaps your user community can do that for you.

Don’t be afraid

And I admit, this idea can be scary. We’ve worked hard as a profession to be smart and create good content. Some of us still work in organizations where they believe anyone can write so tech comm isn’t anything special. This sounds like that but worse.

That’s why I think our role is going to shift. We still add value – potentially a lot of value – but it’s going to be different value. And it’s up to us to create that new role.

Your thoughts? Do you agree that our role is changing or do you think this is another fad?