The sad case of GDS and the tax manuals

The UK’s Government Digital Service has been doing great work in putting users’ needs before the needs of government, so it was a shock to see the revised tax manuals the GDS and HMRC published recently. In the GDS blog post, First HMRC manual on GOV.UK – give us your feedback, Till Worth explained: “HMRC has built a new… Read more »

New case study – Creating an operations manual for a medical service provider

You’ll find a new case study on the Cherryleaf website, regarding a project we carried out for Affidea. Affidea Group BV is a company that offers premium diagnostic imaging, cancer detection and cancer treatment services. It focuses on delivering prompt, thorough diagnoses and high quality treatments by working only with state-of-the-art technology and experienced medical professionals. Affidea… Read more »

Your policy and procedures manual as software

Jared Spool tweeted this morning: PLEASE, PLEASE! Tell me that Apple is going to release Hypercard for the iPad! — Jared Spool (@jmspool) September 9, 2014 HyperCard was a hypertext program that came with Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. It allowed you to create “stacks” of online cards, which organsiations used to create some of the first… Read more »

Why you probably shouldn’t use Word to create your policy documents

Imagine you are an IT manager for an organisation that has been implementing new IT systems. You have now reached the point where you need to create and document the new IT policies and procedures. The organisation already has some general policies for IT in its staff handbook, but you need to provide more detailed… Read more »

Getting information from Subject Matter Experts

Interviews with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are some of the most useful sources for Technical Authors when they are gathering information about a product or procedure. This often involves asking a developer or departmental manager a series of questions focused on the types of questions end users are likely to ask. Interviewing is one of… Read more »