General description
Your product needs user documentation (manuals, instructions, etc.), but your small business (20-100 employees) doesn’t have in-house staff to create that documentation. This article describes how to select and enable your “non-writing” employees to create great user documentation.
You NEED great user docs
You product needs Excellent user documents (instruction manuals, user guides, reference manuals, instruction sheets, etc.):
. Undocumented features become costly failures
. All products have shortcomings; Great user docs help your users fix these issues.
. Providing information beyond the bare minimum helps reduce support costs
You users deserve Excellent user docs:
. Eliminate jumps in the documentation that the User cannot follow
. To understand what the product will do and how it works
. Provide advice and knowledge to provide the best user experience possible.
Great user documentation will reduce support costs, increase user satisfaction, and increase your profits (fewer returns and more positive recommendations).
But you don’t have writing staff
If you can! If you can find employees who are between projects, or who want to take on additional responsibilities and learn new skills, these may be your writing staff.
However, you may be considering hiring an outside freelance writer. Maybe that’s a good choice. However, let me list some benefits of using in-house non-writers instead of freelance writers:
. Experience with the company (culture, management, style, physical plant)
. Knowledge of the product, market, users
. They can meet members of the design and development teams.
. Already configured with resources in your company (desk, telephone, access to information resources)
. It will be a resource that you can use to update or create new documentation
. Will effectively employ someone who is between projects
select who will write
To ask Your staff if you want to write the User Document for a particular product:
. If you have volunteers, these are the employees you should consider becoming your writers.
. If you don’t have volunteers, you may have to resort to coercion. Perhaps it explains the benefits of writing versus other, less attractive jobs (or even temporary layoffs).
. If necessary, assign someone or a group to the writing task.
Convince your new writers
. Tell them you will provide support, training, and time to write. Make sure you keep your promises.
. Tell them writing skills would benefit your career (communication skills are often a benefit)
. Variety will make your work more interesting.
. He will try to make this as risk-free as possible.
. Tell them that the Great User Document they produce will benefit the product and the company (and them).
If they have other objections to the writing assignment, evaluate their objections and determine if you have a reasonable argument to overcome their objections. If not, you might be better off finding someone else for the writing project.
You can Allow non-writers to write
Most of your employees who have gone through an educational system and have been hired by your company probably can write. They may be afraid to write. I think that if they can think clearly and explain something verbally to someone sitting next to them, then they can write excellent user documents.
Simply pushing a writing task on the non-writer is unfair and will prove unproductive. You need to support the new writer.
How to support your new writers
Training
. they need a full method for writing.
need guide on how to get started, what tools to use, and a method for producing great user documents.
. they need a effective organization for the user document.
They need to know what to include in the User Document and how to structure the document
. They need an easy way to write first drafts and how to review them.
. They need a way to to feel comfortable perform the task before stressful writing.
Most people remember an adversarial relationship between themselves as writers and their reader (usually a teacher or critic).
. They do NOT need grammar lessons.
Hire an editor, and if you’re cost conscious, hire one from a university. See the site-editing article listed in the “Resources” or “About the Author” section of this article.
Support:
. Access to development and marketing teams;
. Use of the development team to evaluate your writing (small snippets);
. Access to the product, literature, marketing materials.
Resources:
. stylebook;
. Editor;
. Time to do a good job
The resource links in the “Resources” or “About the Author” section of this article will help your new writer get started.
Beware of technical lures
If your new writers are coming from your technical areas, they may want to spend time learning writing technology. They don’t need it!
my point is not to spend time learning new tools that might not benefit your company’s situation. Let’s look at the two popular lures:
1. Sophisticated writing software
Very few professional technical writers would use a word processor to create a large user document. However, it will in all probability NOT create a gigantic user document. Most likely your user document is less than 40 pages. A modern word processor (such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or Lotus WordPro, all are registered trademarks) will do the job easily.
2. Content Management System (CMS)
I think the documentation industry has been incorrectly focused on content management systems (CMS). CMS are reasonable tools for large companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Toyota that have a large number of documents. For smaller companies (like yours), CMSs are a distraction from the real task, which is “how to produce the user documentation your product needs and your users deserve.”
Oh! Your new writer might say that by writing in XML or using a CMS, you will be able to create the text in a format and easily produce that text in HTML, in print, or as a PDF (Portable Document Format, used by Adobe Reader). That is not a valid argument for your situation. Modern word processors have the ability to produce HTML documents, convert their output to PDF, and print.
Another argument is that a CMS will allow writers to reuse content from one product to another. I think this argument is not relevant for companies with few products. While dated, a good library system and the use of cut and paste will suffice for the smallest company.
Instead, focus on these
Instead of spending time learning new technology that may or may not help your writing project, your writers (in fact, everyone writers) should focus on what is important to the users of your product. These are:
. Fascinated: The material that you will provide in your User Document
. Access to that content: allowing your reader to easily find what they need right now and skip what they don’t need
If your new writers know how to use writing tools like FrameMaker(tm) or a content management system (and one is set up), then by all means they should use these tools. But everyone should remember that the Reader (the User of your product) only sees the content through the accessibility to that content. Don’t let technology get in the way of helping your Reader.
The bottom line
Most literate people, with reasonable support and resources, can be guided to create effective user documentation. A good place to find resources is in the “Resources” or “About the Author” section of this article.