1. RUCHI VOHRA & PREETHI SATISH
HOW TO EAT AN ELEPHANT
RUCHI VOHRA & PREETHI SATISH
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

2. ABOUT US
Ruchi has over eight years of experience as a Technical Writer. She is a Senior Writer with Innovatia, based in Bangalore, India. She has an extensive experience in technical writing and creating documentation from scratch and rebranding the existing documentation. She is passionate about researching in the fields of Agile Methodology, User Experience through UI and UX, and Information Experience.
Preethi has over ten years of experience in developing end-user documentation. She is a Senior Writer with Innovatia, based in Bangalore, India. She has worked with different project teams and learned to continuously adapt to diverse process and methods followed during project development. She is always on the lookout to investigate process-related issues and collaborate to implement process improvement across projects and teams.
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

3. WHAT COMES TO
YOUR MIND?

4. AND THE NEXT 35 MINUTES … Know your elephant Tame your elephant
Eat your elephant
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

5. BEFORE YOU BEGIN Review process efficient Process and activities
Multiple teams and releases
Process and activities
Last minute updates
Waterfall to Agile transition
Minimalism
Doc Validation T O L S
New to Agile
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

6. “Knowing what you want is half the battle
“Knowing what you want is half the battle. The trick is to stay tenacious and not let any setback derail your vision.”
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

7. KNOW YOUR ELEPHANT
Requirements for Project
Localization, output types (PDF, HTML, mobile)
Project Type
New or existing product release, audience and competitors
Project Development Methodology
Waterfall, Agile or Fluid ecosystem
PLAN
Team
Stakeholders, feature owner, and reviewers. Tools for tracking bugs and user stories
Timeline
Number of sprint cycles or milestones
Feature Requirement
Feature-list, business requirement, reusable content
Document Quality Initiatives
Documentation trends and best practices

8. THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE

9. To achieve this, you need to make your goals and tasks visible in the process.
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

10. TAME YOUR ELEPHANT Write generic, use minimalism approach
Lean development methodology
Write generic, use minimalism approach
Streamlining the content
Topic based writing, create standalone feature-publication
GOAL
Collaborative authoring and team work
Peer review, common terminology & regularly scrutinize documents
Standardize documentation process
Robust authoring, image, & review tool
Review approach
Start early and send feature-level publication
Open communication
Active player, attend demos & planning meetings
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

11. team, but by different writers.
CASE STUDY
Multiple platforms (product A,B, and C) supported by the same development
team, but by different writers.
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

12. Step1: Understanding requirement
TRADITIONAL APPROACH A B C
Lion 1.0
Python 1.0
Python 2.0
Lion 1.X
AXE 1.0
Step1: Understanding requirement
Step 2:
Designing content
Step 3:
Reviewing
Step 4:
Publishing
RESULT
DOC A B C
Lion 1.0
Python 1.0
Python 2.0
Lion 1.X
AXE 1.0

13. OUR APPROACH B C A A- Topics C - Topics AXE 1.0 Lion Lion Python
Lion 1.X
AXE 1.0 A
Python 1.0
Python
2.0
1.X
Python 1.0
A- Topics
Common Folder
1.0
Lion
AXE 1.0
C - Topics
Review
Feature-level Review
Lion
Python
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

14. EAT YOUR ELEPHANT Content and Task Analysis Streamlining Content
Continuous Flow System
Creating feature level publications and sending for review
Using collaborative review tool
Streamlining Content
Writing generic and moving reusable content into common folder
Using Lean Methodology
Content and Task Analysis
Identifying common content and common tasks
Using in-house tool Content Miner
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

15. KEY TAKEAWAYS Create content-on-demand Reduce rework and duplication
Save writers and reviewers time
Reduce localization and maintenance cost
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

16. EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
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17. THANK YOU! Visit us on the web:
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

18. REFERENCES Further reading Template references: Other references:
Template references:
Other references:
© 2016