Technical Documentation Quality Strategy
A collaborative framework for TraceLink's technical documentation debut that incorporates critical reviews into the Document Development Life Cycle (DDLC).
Summary
Company
TraceLink
Role
Manager, Technical Publications
Location
North Reading, MA
Year
2015
At the inception of TraceLink’s Technical Publications team in 2015, we established the first formal process within the team and the greater Product Management Organization. This initiative was aimed to proactively tackle the inherent challenges of technical documentation quality and consistency that is frequent for companies coming out of the startup phase of their journey. This was my “leadership debut” at TraceLink, and I tackled it head-on setting the tone for the team and organization for years to come.
Built to Scale
This process initiated with 2 document projects in 2015 and is still active in 2024, scaling over 64 projects.
Objectives
01
Enhance the accuracy and completeness of the technical documentation.
02
Ensure a consistent tone and voice across all documentation.
03
Facilitate a collaborative review process involving Product Managers, engineering teams, and Technical Writers.
04
Improve internal workflows for operational efficiency
05
Reduce support and customer complaints calls by providing robust and usable content.
Strategy & Implementation
Solution
Ensure long-term content goals by addressing imminent post-startup documentation challenges, establishing a comprehensive and scalable Technical Publications process that put authenticity and consistent writing at the forefront. Cross-functional technical and peer review processes were necessary to armor the project from the outset, ensuring that safeguarding content integrity was a top priority.
To establish this foundation:
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Peer reviews would ensure adherence to recent styles and standards, ensuring technical content was consistent in voice and structure.
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Technical reviews by Development and QA to authenticate the product's behavior.
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Final reviews by Product Management, ensuring clarity of the business value for customers.
Project
Requirements
a.
Completion of all documentation four weeks before product release to the testing environment.
c.
Consistency with newly created writing styles and standards.
e.
A centralized system to facilitate and track the review process.
g.
Well-defined roles and expectations for each participant.
i.
Formal metrics to track documentation accuracy and operational efficiency.
b.
Adherence to GxP documentation practices.
d.
Zero risk introduced to timelines of committed deliverables.
f.
Key stakeholder buy-in and management’s agreement to ensure process integrity.
h.
Training for clear expectation setting.
j.
Consumer feedback loop on documentation quality.
Stakeholders
The benefits of an initiative like this one is how it can positively impact employee's engagement while greatly improving customer satisfaction, which is every leader's ideal.
Research and Discovery
Stakeholder Interviews
Customer Feedback
Understanding various team process flows, pinpointing significant pain points, and harnessing existing insights, showing curiosity proved fruitful. By immersing myself in these invaluable learnings, I developed innovative relevant cross-collaborative processes aimed at enhancing efficiency and fostering success across teams, while establishing trust.
Through exploration of customer feedback, the dissatisfaction with receiving lackluster deliverables like Excel files, PDFs, and Word documents where the content lacked context was palpable. Multiple perspectives on the content to ensure a holistic view of the information beyond the specifications was necessary. The goal was clear: high-quality and comprehensive materials that effectively meet the customers' needs, with an elevated look and feel to re-instill trust in the brand.
Process Definition & Execution
I served as the owner of this initiative with executive sponsorship from VP and Founder, Lucy Deus, global track and trace expert and Product Manager for TraceLink's serialization suite.
Challenges & Solutions
Rapidly Changing Requirements & Burn Out
Challenge: Rapidly changing requirements led to overtime work for writers.
Solution 1: Introduced a “BLOCKED” state for documents until requirements stabilized to raise requirements challenges sooner (and stimulate mitigations quicker).
Solution 2: Implemented time tracking in Jira to analyze effort and resource needs.
Inexperience in Jira Usage
Challenge: Inconsistent Jira usage among SMEs due to limited tool experience, resulting in delayed review notifications and tight turnaround times.
Solution 1: Implemented Scrum of Scrums meetings to synchronize activities and resolve dependencies. Weekly readouts to Product Management Leadership on the new framework's progress ensured ongoing visibility.
Solution 2: Conducted Jira training and secured buy-in from R&D leadership to pilot new features.
With Visibility Comes Feedback Floodgates
Challenge: Inconsistent Jira usage by SMEs resulted as result of
minimal experience with the tool in delayed review notifications and tight-turnaround times.
Solution 1: Implemented Scrum of Scrums meetings to synchronize activities and resolve dependencies and held weekly executive readouts on the progress of the new framework.
Solution 2: Conducted training on Jira and elicited buy-in from R&D leadership to pilot new features.
Outcomes & Benefits
Final Process Definiton
Formalized document development life cycle process and proper tooling to facilitate and enable stakeholders.
Product Outcomes
Delivered 15 API messages and 5 screens of documentation within 6 weeks (including sprint 0).
Achieved significant improvements in user satisfaction and engagement with documentation.
Increased operational efficiency within the product management department.
Established benchmarks for operational performance and content quality.
Discovered and resolved more development bugs prior to deployment, prompting QA to propose automating testing against documented API guidelines for ongoing quality and automation leverage.
Uncovered additional customer requirements and use cases.
Highlighted a continued demand for structured cross-functional processes within the Product Management Organization.
Marked an unexpected but impactful debut for the technical content and team, inspiring others to examine process improvements including KPIs and metrics.
Successful First Impression
Inspired other teams, like User Experience, to formalize their processes and to explore obtaining more visibility to their work.
Positioned Technical Publications as an active steakholder in the product development process.
First formal documentation available via HTML and PDF, replacing excel and work documents kicked off the path toward industry-standard technical content and content design.
Lucy Deus
SVP, Product Management and TraceLink Founder
"This is senior management level work. I am in awe that this was put together in such a short period of time."
Stefan Baytarian
Product Manager, UX
"It is great seeing more polished documentation sent to custoemrs instead of just an excel sheet. It feels like we're growing up"
Kristyne Guerin
Senior B2B Integration Developer
" It was easier for me to predict when work would come to me, and I even caught errors in my own development while reading the documentation!"
Conclusion
This project significantly improved the quality and consistency of TraceLink’s technical documentation, enhancing user satisfaction and internal workflows. The formalized review process enabled better cross-functional collaboration and resulted in high-quality standards with minimal documentation errors, but almost more importantly, higher product quality.
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to VP Lucy Deus, writer Patrick Murphy, application developers Krystine Guerin and Emmanuel Hadzipetros, and our Services representatives for their invaluable contributions.