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 »
Tag: Technical Documentation
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 »
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 »
The hidden cost of “So intuitive it doesn’t need a manual”
In product design, one mantra comes up again and again: “If it’s intuitive, it doesn’t need a manual.” It sounds great in theory. But in practice, chasing perfect intuitiveness can be a trap – one that quietly turns your product into a commodity. Intuitive often means familiar When people describe something as “intuitive,” what they… Read more »
What will ChatGPT mean for the future of technical communication?
ChatGPT was launched last week. On the OpenAI.com website, it states: ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue We’ve trained a model called ChatGPT which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. ChatGPT is a sibling… Read more »