Abhishek Jain: Do More with Less, Increase Your ROC!
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The document discusses how technical communicators can do more with less by exercising three levers: lean, measure, and engage. It advocates adopting a lean approach to content creation by focusing on minimum viable content and rapid iteration. It also emphasizes measuring content usage analytics to understand customers and justify returns. Finally, it recommends engaging with subject matter experts and end users by collaborating, incorporating feedback, and making content a two-way street.
Abhishek Jain: Do More with Less, Increase Your ROC!
- 1. Do more with less, increase your ROC! Abhishek Jain | Product Manager | Adobe TechComm
- 2. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Who’s talking? Manage the Adobe Technical Communication products Responsible for • Product strategy/roadmap • Partner ecosystem • Customer relationship 2 @abhi_AdobeTC abhishekj@adobe.com Abhishek Jain
- 3. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. The 3 key levers 3 LEAN Learn how to do more with less. Iterate quickly and generate quality content. MEASURE Content creation is a continuous process. Analyze the key metrics and optimize. ENGAGE Listen to the mot important stakeholder in the value chain. Engage your end users. Do more with less by exercising three simple levers.
- 4. LEAN: What, Why and How Plan Do Check Act
- 5. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 5 Why Lean? Business is demanding more efficiency 72% reported their software budgets are either decreasing or at best stable.. ..while >40% reported increase in workload Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490); The 2012 Writers UA Salary Survey Survey question: Over the last 3 years, what has been the trend for software spends in your tech pubs department? There is more to do –deadlines to meet, more devices, more languages and more technologies to comprehend
- 6. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 6 Are you trying to accommodate everything?
- 7. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 7 What “Lean” means for Technical Writers? Avoid Content Bloat Don’t Overpack your content with extra baggage / excess information. Waste in documentation is classified into two categories: • Non-value-added content • Non-value-added activities in the documentation process (DDLC). Rapidly iterate and improve The combination of experimentation, tight feedback loops and related performance assessments yield effective content: • Align with the ongoing Agile development • Adopt a minimalist approach
- 8. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 8 How to create Minimum Viable Content? Adopt a minimalistic approach focusing on the content that the users actually need. Start each project by asking the following questions: Who really needs information? When do they need it, and can we phase it in? What is the purpose of the document? How can we shorten the time line by reducing the non-value adding wastes? What does the customer actually need and want? How can we improve the content easily over time?
- 9. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 9
- 10. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Collaboration with SMEs is important and becoming more critical 10 Increasing 31% More or less stable 60% Decreasing 4% Don’t know 5% Extent of Collaboration % of respondents >30% of the respondents state that the extent of collaboration is increasing Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=515), Survey Question: How has the extent of collaboration with SMEs been over the last 3 years in your organization?
- 11. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. • Reviewers should be able to get a sense of what the help will really look like • Review content should be easy to annotate – much similar to Word or pdf. 11 SME Reviews - What makes for a good review process? Close resemblance to the actual output • Author should be able to update the content continuously throughout the review process. • A central source should be updated. SMEs needn’t require downloading files locally. Continuous iterations of the review • Sometimes people disagree and some people have complex understanding of technical details. • Divergent parties should be able to discuss during times of disagreement. Conversations between reviewers
- 12. ANALYZE: Understand your customers Because knowledge is power
- 13. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 13 Measure traffic and justify your “Return on Content” Measure the following insights: • Most and least frequently visited topics • Traffic sources: CSH, Organic or Google • Language / Locale • Device type – Desktop or Mobile • Search statistics • Time spent per topic / Bounce rate • Multimedia consumption Understand your audience
- 14. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 14 Feed analytics insights directly to the Product Team Following insights can be useful assets for Product and Marketing team: • Search statistics • Analyze what users are not able to find. These can be potential features / enhancements • Frequently visited content • End user feedback on topics • Demographics Explore and add value
- 15. Content: A 2 way street Engage, analyze and collaborate
- 16. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 16 Technical Content workflow is becoming circular Author Collaborate PublishEngage Analyze & Curate
- 17. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 17 More and more technical communicators are adopting user engagement and analyzing content consumption 42% of the respondents 31% ~20% Use / planning to do user engagement Use / planning to use content analytics Allow end users to create/edit content Source: Content Wrangler Benchmarking survey 2012; Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2014
- 18. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 18 Customer Centricity Know your customer Few tips • Walk a mile in their shoes • Know your “Ideal” customer – User persona • Focus on usability – They already have a problem ! • Use simple language that people can relate to • Make your content “easily” searchable • You can’t please everyone
- 19. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 19 Feedback and Rating The Doctor is In Start by Diagnosing & Curing Reader’s Pain As a technical communicator you’re responsible for not just knowing your readers, but also understanding their pain, and solving it. This means knowing the problems they face and providing solutions that cure the most pressing pain first. Feedback and complaints are excellent sources of information about customer pain, if you use them to properly diagnose the pain.
- 20. Summarizing Go Lean, Analyze and Engage
- 21. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 21 In Conclusion… Today’s technical communicator should be Catering to their audience wherever they maybe Focusing on not just creating content but also efficiency Engaging with the audience and becoming more analytical
- 22. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. Catch the low hanging fruits 22
- 23. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential. 23 Just like fine wine, a healthy help system Improves With Age
- 24. © 2015 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All Rights Reserved. Adobe Confidential.