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.
Product life cycle support
Information products offer the user support in various phases of the product life cycle, e.g. installation, commissioning, use, maintenance or disposal.
A distinction is made between planning for information product creation due to product development, product change and need for change to the information product without changing the product.
The content of the information product is closely interlinked with information from other company departments, e.g. development, marketing, training or service. In order to achieve effective and efficient creation, time coordination with these areas must also be taken into account.
The results of project planning are used in the next phases.
- Presentation and process description of the product life cycle
- Connection and interaction between product life cycle and the creation of information products (e.g. necessity, development processes and provision of information products)
- Information requirements in product life cycle phases
- Continuous updating over the entire product life cycle: Continuous Delivery
- Product development processes and development of information products with industry-specific differences (e.g. processes in mechanical engineering, plant engineering, automotive engineering or software development)
- Integration of the requirements of the information products (e.g. need for a display) into the product specification (e.g. availability of a display)
- Interlocking the information product development process with the product development process (e.g. via milestones)
- Information flows between technical communication and product development (e.g. joint use of requirement and bug reporting systems)
- Agile development methods and their impact on content development
- Incremental, iterative development and continuous delivery and their requirements for technical documentation
- Role, duties and contribution of technical communication in agile teams
- Agile feedback channels as a source of technical documentation
- Scrum, Kanban, user stories as relevant tools
- ContentOps for automated content delivery and testing
- Planning the necessary information products for the product
- Planning the information architecture
- Change management during product development
- Identification of the information products and content affected by the change (e.g. content modules, tables)
- Determination of the scope of change (e.g. additional information or inventory change) and the degree of change (e.g. minimum change, adjustments or complete revisions, e.g. terminology)
- Determination of change histories and versions
- Change management for product changes after completion of product development
- Translation planning for changes
- Determining the scope of corrections or additions and the content to be corrected
- Prioritization and assessment of the urgency of corrections
- Information about corrections to the target group
- Distribution of corrections
- Replacing the corrected information product and ensuring delivery (e.g. updates on the Internet, downloads)
- Initiating recalls
- Translation planning for corrections
- Integrating technical communication with other areas of the company (e.g. marketing, product management, sales, education and training)
- Sales channels and the resulting requirements for technical documentation (e.g. formats, media, data formats)
- Differences in sales channels (e.g. B2B, B2C, C2C) and their relevance for technical communication
- E-commerce and its relevance for technical communication
- Potential and possibilities of automating the product (e.g. for innovative service models, digital twin) and their relevance for technical communication