Planning
The entire information development process must be planned in advance. The creation of information products usually takes place through project-like organized processes. As no two information products are the same, the creation of information products must be planned as a project despite the existence of standard processes for information development.
The trigger for the creation of information is usually the product development process, which is also organized as a project. In this case, the information product development project is a sub-project in the superordinate product development project. In addition, changes to products that have already been introduced or changes to the framework conditions may require the information products to be adapted. In all cases, planning must take into account the necessary resources such as money, personnel and time as well as processes and relevant interfaces, e.g. with suppliers.
The planning includes:
- Product life cycle support
- Planning the creation of information
- Project management
Planning is influenced by information from various sources, e.g. from the environment analysis, but also from internal documents such as product specifications, requirement specifications, functional specifications or empirical values from previous projects. Fundamental content and conceptual specifications are also incorporated into the planning.
The result of the planning phase is a specific schedule and milestone plan for the creation of the information products, which also provides information on capacity, costs and interfaces.
Planning the creation of information
The requirements for each information product differ in each project. Therefore, the planning of the information production of the individual detailed tasks must be set up specifically.
This includes determining how the process is organized, which resources are required for implementation, what knowledge the employees carrying out the work must have, which interfaces must be taken into account, and which requirements must be met so that the individual sub-steps of the information development process can run smoothly. The planning basis is usually provided by empirical values from previous projects.
The entire process of information development (time, tasks, content and sequence) is designed in advance during information creation planning.
- Specification of creation scopes and resource planning
- Production planning of information products
- Planning the purchase and commissioning of service providers (e.g. media developers, terminology translators, graphic designers, TD service providers)
- Time and task planning (e.g. work packages, schedule for e.g. editorial tasks, supplier documentation, service provider documentation, graphic and media creation, translation tasks)
- Process design, interfaces and task coordination
- Planning integration with support processes (e.g. translation, terminology)
- Dealing with confidential information
- Planning the use of tools
- Planning of information procurement (e.g. objectives, list of questions, location, interviewees, materials, preparation, access to requirement and bug tracking systems, materials, prototypes, beta versions, preparation)
- Planning the information procurement process: process steps and planning scales (e.g. time planning, effort planning)
- Definition of requirements for internal company sources (e.g. data formats, templates) and documents
- Determination of requirements from open source software
- Presentation of the information development process and detailed description of the phases and work packages in the development of information products
- Different characteristics in the information development process, in the individual phases or phase-related tasks (e.g. industry-dependent, product-dependent, depending on the project management method)
- Possibilities of organizing general and specific processes for the creation of information products
- Specification and selection of information products (for the various phases of the product life cycle)
- Specification and selection of media for the target group
- Specification of all product-related information (e.g. for document overview, for delivery list)
- Specification of information products for product variants
- Creation of a content plan (e.g. list, structure)
- Specification and selection of display type and level of detail
- Definition of the specific requirements for external information products (e.g. supplier documentation) and contract design
- Planning of internally created product information content
- Integration planning for different internal (possibly external) content or information products (e.g. supplier documentation integration)
- Consideration of necessary declarations, certificates and approvals
- Planning the implementation of the individual results of the environment analysis
- Definition of the specific content concept
- Definition of the specific media concept
- Media-specific production planning (e.g. illustrations, films, animations)
- Planning the implementation of international requirements
- Planning the update processes