Thanks God for giving me an opportunity for woring with BSM Business solutions Pvt. Ltd., a fully owned system development center (SDC) of Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement or Schulte group. Formerly the center was known as SBN Technologics -BSM Division.
You may ask what difference has BSM BS with other software companies??? Nothing! But, I felt something different! Because I benefited a lot from the company. Actually, the company gave me a chance to set up the entire documentation process, culture, methodology...
...and, ofcouse, more...
in their software development division. Literally, I had to start the documentation work 'From the Scratch'.
Usually, if you join a company as a technical writer, they will never allow you to set up the process unless you have a minimum of 10 years of experience and have proven track record. When I was joining SBNT BSM I have only 4-5 years of experience. Among these 4-5 years, 2 years was in main stream journalism. Actually, I can not blatantly claim that "I" have implemented the technical writing process and procedure in the company because I was getting clear vision and direction from a software industry stalwart, SB Nair, the founder and MD of SBNT. He is a product of IIT and IIM also a Certified Information Systems Auditor. You want to know more about him?
3rd March, 2009 was the day when I first stepped in the den of a lion! I have started my true expedition and experiments on software documentation process and the exciting journey in to the world of technical writing.
I have had an interview with Mr. SBN on 10th February, 2009. I have never been ivaluated in this manner never before...
Read next post for more details...
11/22/2010
How technical writers can Use 'Variables' in FrameMaker for their advantage?
Variables in FrameMaker help the technical writers to reduce the writing effort. I am not telling that a technical writer can automate the writing with the help of Variable. It helps you to store chunk of information (one or two sentences or a paragraph of content) for future use. When you need to write the content again, just go to the variable and click on the variable entry (name).
You can heavily depend on variable in case you are writing long user manuals or other user documentation. I can give you an example. Let us assume that you are writing a user manual for software. There may be a button in the software for saving the functionality. Whenever you describe how to achieve a functionality, mostly the last sentence will be 'Click on the save button. System prompts a confirmation message window that says "Saved Successfully". You may be repeated this sentence a hundred times in the document. To reduce the writing time, create this sentence as a variable entry. Whenever you want to write this sentence, open the variable pod and click on the entry.
Now your question may be 'how to create a variable? Open the FrameMaker and then click on the F1 button! Search variable from the FrameMaker user manual...
You can heavily depend on variable in case you are writing long user manuals or other user documentation. I can give you an example. Let us assume that you are writing a user manual for software. There may be a button in the software for saving the functionality. Whenever you describe how to achieve a functionality, mostly the last sentence will be 'Click on the save button. System prompts a confirmation message window that says "Saved Successfully". You may be repeated this sentence a hundred times in the document. To reduce the writing time, create this sentence as a variable entry. Whenever you want to write this sentence, open the variable pod and click on the entry.
Now your question may be 'how to create a variable? Open the FrameMaker and then click on the F1 button! Search variable from the FrameMaker user manual...
11/17/2010
This week, we have experimented something in technical writing peer review
This week, we have experimented something in technical writing peer review.
As I am working in a software product company, and the estimated development time of the single product is more than 2 years, it requires huge documentation work. My team has already created lots of technical as well as user documentations in this regard. We have already assigned single or multiple products - based on the complexity - to each technical writer in order to get domain expertise.
Afte one and a half years, we felt that our user manuals need to be audited as early as possible because we could not update the functionality changes frequently due to the amount of work as well as lack of information flow. The major constrain what I faced as a team lead was nothing but ‘TIME’. If I ask my team members to review their user manuals again, I am sure that they can not complete the work within 20-22 working days.
As we are working on 8 products simultaneously, we are not in a position to review each product in pdf and then update the relevant comments in the FrameMaker document. I have formulated a simple idea that nothing but “Save a copy, Create a new document version, and turn on the track edit option of FrameMaker. Then review and write the user manual as it is your responsible product”. I am not sure if this method still exists in the technical communication world. Anyway, we have shared our documents and source materials such as system overview, technical notes, functional spec, emails, SME interview details etc. etc.. to another technical writer.
When I reviewed the review, I find that 2 of my team members were doing same error while peer reviewing; that was nothing but they were simply commenting like they did earlier. I have given clear instruction on how to perform the review and corrected the issue.
The result was incredible! As of now, the user documentation is accurate. I couldn’t even imagine that we will get this output.
Fellow writers... you can use this methodology.
As I am working in a software product company, and the estimated development time of the single product is more than 2 years, it requires huge documentation work. My team has already created lots of technical as well as user documentations in this regard. We have already assigned single or multiple products - based on the complexity - to each technical writer in order to get domain expertise.
Afte one and a half years, we felt that our user manuals need to be audited as early as possible because we could not update the functionality changes frequently due to the amount of work as well as lack of information flow. The major constrain what I faced as a team lead was nothing but ‘TIME’. If I ask my team members to review their user manuals again, I am sure that they can not complete the work within 20-22 working days.
As we are working on 8 products simultaneously, we are not in a position to review each product in pdf and then update the relevant comments in the FrameMaker document. I have formulated a simple idea that nothing but “Save a copy, Create a new document version, and turn on the track edit option of FrameMaker. Then review and write the user manual as it is your responsible product”. I am not sure if this method still exists in the technical communication world. Anyway, we have shared our documents and source materials such as system overview, technical notes, functional spec, emails, SME interview details etc. etc.. to another technical writer.
When I reviewed the review, I find that 2 of my team members were doing same error while peer reviewing; that was nothing but they were simply commenting like they did earlier. I have given clear instruction on how to perform the review and corrected the issue.
The result was incredible! As of now, the user documentation is accurate. I couldn’t even imagine that we will get this output.
Fellow writers... you can use this methodology.
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