This is the first article in a series about using ITIL 4 concepts in developing documentation strategy. These articles are for technical writers, documentation strategists, and product managers who want to improve documentation.
Cloud technology is huge in the technology world right now. Most experts predict that it’s only going to increase in market share. In this article, I’ll look at cloud technology from the perspective of technical writers and what technical writers need to know in order to work in and with the cloud.
Child documents, or sub-documents, make up the bulk of a project. Think of them as Lego blocks – pieces of various sizes that can be put together to make all sorts of end documents. Each child document answers a single question, or addresses a single topic.
Traditional software documents are created from the top down. Figure out who will be doing what with the software, then write documents aimed at each category of users, explaining how to use every bit of functionality they should (theoretically) need to use. This method really doesn’t fit in well with modern software design. So how can we use basic concepts from Agile methodology to develop Agile documentation?
Your documentation is one of the first things people look at when they’re having trouble using your product – or thinking of using your product. As such, it’s a powerful ambassador for your company.
So let’s look at some of the aspects of documentation strategy that you need to consider.
In Sphinx project, ‘base documents’ are like the skeleton of a manual. In a table of contents, they’ll show up as the chapter headings.
Agile documentation isn’t that hard once you get your head around applying software development methodology and concepts to technical writing. Here are a few tips for making your documentation truly agile.
A master file controls almost all of the content that will be included in your user manual. It contains a list of your base documents and specifies what your table of contents will look like.
5 Types of User Feedback to Collect
Users leave us a lot of feedback these days. Some of it is active and deliberate, like adding a comment to an article on a website. Some of it is incidental, like clicking on an article and then closing the browser window before the page has fully loaded. And many companies aren’t taking advantage of all of the user feedback they could be collecting.