Product Documentation Strategy: What Is It and Why Do We Need It?¶
Description
As a technical writer, I am focused on one major goal: my users’ success. I create clear reference topics, intuitive tasks, and delightful concepts. But what is the other writer at my company doing? How are they delighting their users? And are their users the same as mine?
I write at a company whose products are modular. Customers use a blend of different products to achieve their goals. While I can write the most amazing documentation for product A, if a customer also uses product B, a different writer determined what those deliverables were. Sure, we have a style guide. The documentation looks like it came from the same company, but there’s work the user must do to put those pieces together.
With 30+ years of baggage of creating technical documentation this way, our organization realized we needed a solution to bring order to the chaos. Thus, the Product Documentation Strategy was born. I want to share my story of transforming from a Technical Writer into an Information Architect (IA). As an IA, I now have two goals: my users’ success and the writers’ success.
I will share why my team exists, how this is an upcoming trend in our industry, and some challenges and rewards I’ve seen on this journey.
- Conference: Write the Docs PORTLAND
- Year: 2019
