Effective documentation is no accident
Like an engineered product, effective documentation is the result of a process that includes collaboration, discovery, design, development, review, and approval. These concepts are really a high-level description of an effective documentation process. For more detail, click the following panels:
Perhaps the most important attribute of effective technical documentation is that it meets a need. Written and verbale instructions have probably been around since people began asking for help. In today's world, we have an expanding variety of communication mediums to pass along and preserve instructions, but it must still meet a need to add value. Whether the need is stated or implied, the purpose of effective documentation is to meet it.
Another quality of effective documentation is that it is targeted. For example, you don't expect to receive an owner's guide for a luxury car when all you bought was a toaster. On the other hand, you might flip through the luxury car owner's guide if you're thinking about purchasing it. In that case, it should be available to you in a place that makes sense: the documentation page of the luxury car website. Effective documentation is aimed at a specific audience with a specific purpose. It addresses a primary audience, but it may also address others who have related interests.
Useful documentation is also thoughtfully designed. It no longer suffices to create printed documentation or even to publish it as a portable document file (PDF). In fact, we must now be ready to manage content in such a way that we can publish it across a variety of devices for an endless number of expanding use cases. Whether your target uses a mobile device or requires a chat bot, your documentation must be organized in such a way that it can be broken down into small chunks of information and contextualized for repurposing in a bewildering array of sitautions. For a design to be thoughtful, it must scale with increasing demand and support easy maintenance.
The most effective documentation gets to the point and answers a question. If someone reads a technical document, it's not likely out of the pure joy of reading. It's because they want a quick answer to something that has them stumped. No one likes to wait on hold for a tech support call or navigate through a bewildering array of options to talk to a person who might not even have the answer they need. They'd rather find the information right away so they can move onto other tasks.
Finally, effective technical documentation is managed well. It is stored in a version-countrol repository that supports role-based access. Version control supports audits and rention periods, and it is critical for ongoing collaboration in an increasing globalized, digital business setting. It is also published in client-specific knowledge bases under the lock and key of single sign-on (SSO) and multifactor authentication (MFA). As we store more documents in the cloud, we may also have to access them through virtual private networks (VPNs) and security bastions. How you manage your documentation across these environments makes a difference in how and when others can retrieve the content they need.
A template for every task
One of our specialties is the creation and modification of communication and documentation templates. For example, a global corporation might have a problem with the adoption of its branded templates. The company has taken time develop color schemes, font themes, icons, and logos. It also created templates and guidelines for using its templates, but it lacks the bandwidth to drive adoption.
DocumagineerTM can improve these resources for greater ease of use and adoption across platforms. The result is a series of templates and instructions that save time and promote consistency by using the document properties and native features of the application.