What should a documentation dashboard actually measure?

Someone recently asked on LinkedIn: “Can anyone point to resources on quality/heartbeat dashboards for technical documentation? BKMs or case studies?” It’s a really important question. There are dashboards throughout organisations, but not always in the Technical Publications department. Dashboards give senior leaders a clear view of what teams are working toward and how close they… Read more »

Is your documentation process full of waste? There’s an app for that

Catch a Technical Author on the wrong day, and you hear them complain about spending hours tracking down a Subject Matter Expert who’s perpetually in meetings, or having to rewrite the same section three times because the source information kept changing. In a manufacturing environment, you’d see them as symptoms of waste in the process:… Read more »

New note-taking methods for technical communicators

Note-taking is an important part of a technical communication process. A typical project can move from the account manager to the project manager, and then onto the technical communicator.  Sharing information gathered at client meetings with project team members is often done through internal meetings and phone calls, handover documents written in Word, and other related… Read more »

Being Agile in technical documentation – Part two

Two years ago, we wrote a number of posts, and an Adobe-sponsored whitepaper, on Agile and its effects on technical communication. This topic was picked by others, including Sarah O’Keefe and Mattias Sander, who made further suggestions. We thought it was time to revisit this topic, and expand on some of the issues raised. In Part… Read more »

Being Agile in technical documentation – Part one

Two years ago, we wrote a number of posts, and an Adobe-sponsored whitepaper, on Agile and its effects on technical communication. This topic was picked by others, including Sarah O’Keefe and Mattias Sander, who made further suggestions. We thought it was time to revisit this topic, and expand on some of the issues raised. This is… Read more »