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Writer's pictureVinay Payyapilly

Making documentation a key activity



 Photo by Anna Tarazevich from Pexels

A common complaint when two or more technical writers get together is how documentation is not given the importance it deserves by the product team. It is true, to an extent, that documentation in software companies is something of an afterthought. Neither project managers nor developers take it seriously and more often than not, it is hard to get them to commit time to review and contribute to the content in the Help system.


But like Michael Jackson says in The Man in the Mirror, if you want to make a change, you've got to start with yourself.


The easiest way to make yourself relevant is to affect the bottom-line. Companies bleed money each time a customer reaches out to the Support team. If you can reduce support tickets, it is a surefire way to get noticed. So if you are looking to get your documentation team the recognition you feel it deserves, start with the support tickets. There are some nifty tools in the market that can plug into your support system and give you tonnes of useful data. For example, you can identify the top support call drivers over six to eight weeks and this will tell you which areas of the product require more or better documentation. Go ahead and focus on those areas.


But just putting up articles to address the top call drivers is not sufficient. You need to advertise the fact that you have this documentation out there. The best people to do this are the Support team. Reach out to the Support team, tell them that you have identified the top call drivers and that you have created articles around it. Give them a handy document that has the links to the articles. You will find that the support folks will begin to send out the links rather than type out the entire sequence of steps for the user.


Track these numbers.


As users begin to see the value of the content on the Help system, they will make that their first stop before reaching out to the Support team.


Track these numbers too. Demonstrate how the calls to the Support team have reduced while the page hits on the Help system have improved.


When people see that the content you write is helping the company save money, you will find yourself automatically getting attention.

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