Girl in Tech

There are two kind of authoring, one is Topic Based Authoring and other one is Narrative Authoring. In Technical writing, for large documentation we use Topic Based Authoring. What is Topic Based Authoring? In Topic based authoring, we follow a modular content creation approach where we produce content in modules and compile them to form a large technical document. These modules are independent and can be created by different authors. In this way, several authors contribute towards the large documentation.  Tools used for Topic Based Authoring There are several tools available in market for Topic Based Authoring. Few examples are: DITA  Madcap Flare AEM Confluence Adobe Robohelp DITA is the most popular topic based authoring tool being adopted by several tech organisations. In next blog, we will cover about DITA in detail. 

There are various types of Technical documentation that organization maintain to run their day to day business. The documents are prepared for different audiences from customer to development team. These documents provide product overview, guide the internal process, and assist the sales and marketing team.  There are 15 types of Technical documentation: 1. Product Manuals/ Support Guides 2. User Guide 3. Project Plan 4. Release Notes 5. API Documentation 6. Business Continuity Plan (Includes DR - Disaster Recovery) 7. Release Management Plan 8. White Papers 9. FAQ/ Troubleshooting guides 10. Case Studies 11. Marketing Documents 12. SOW (Statement of Work) 13. RFPs and Proposals 14. Business Standard Documents 15. HLDs and LLDs We will try to cover all of them in detail in our next blog post. Keep reading :)

Six phases of DDLC: DDLC is a systematic way of developing technical documentations in standard format. It consist of six areas: Phase 1: Requirement Gathering Phase 2: Planning the content Phase 3: Developing the content Phase 4: Reviewing the conent Phase 5: Publishing the content Phase 6: Maintaing the content This cycle is excellent if it works with everything else in your organization; e.g., development of product cycle. Implementation of DDLC and its adherence is not that easy. Most of the tech organizations in India maintain the content in traditional formats like PDF and Word. So, it is not easy to maintain and update those documents timely unless they have proper content review cycle.  How Relevant is DDLC for the team? The entire process of creating and maintaining the documents is critical for the knowledge management of the team. Having a documented track of all the product summary strengthens the foundation of the product range of the organization.