In 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli sat in exile and wrote the most ruthlessly practical guide to power ever committed to paper. He wasn’t interested in how things should work. He was interested in how they do. Five centuries later, most SaaS companies treat their user documentation as an afterthought: a support cost to minimise, a page… Read more »
Tag: strategy
The AI workflow war
Which AI vendor is going to come out on top: Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI? At the moment, they’re all great at general tasks, and the gap between them keeps shrinking. So the real competition has moved somewhere less glamorous: into your calendar, your inbox, your Salesforce instance, and your legal review queue. In other words,… Read more »
6 strategic moves every documentation team should consider right now
The role of documentation teams is changing fast. Here’s what we think should be on every documentation manager’s strategic agenda. 1. Increase your visibility Visibility is about communicating status to stakeholders. It’s easier than ever to create dashboards that show content coverage, freshness, and usage, so there’s little excuse not to. If people can’t see… Read more »
When a competitor reduces their documentation team: What it might mean and how to respond
A cloud data company recently made what it described as targeted staff cuts, eliminating its entire technical writing and documentation department. According to reports, the Product Managers will take on documentation responsibilities from now on. There may be perfectly sound reasons for this. For example: cost pressures, a need to move faster to market, confidence… Read more »
Documentation product management: Does the AI era demand a new discipline?
A role emerges In a recent thread on the Write The Docs forum, Ian Cowley suggested the growth of AI might lead to a new role: “product managers for docs”. He wasn’t alone. Stephan Delbos presented on “Activating Product Knowledge” at the Write The Docs Berlin conference, Shrihari Shastry has written an article arguing documentation… Read more »