CIDM Matters

Sairam Venugopalan, Qualcomm
August 1, 2021

Janaka had a technical degree to proudly hoot,
With erudite English acumen to boldly boot.
Even if it be that his semantic skills had no aberration,
They’d only been garnered as a medium of instruction.
This profile in the job jungle just shone brighter,
For him to don the hat of a technical content writer. […]

Research Team:
Rebekka Andersen, University of California, Davis and Carlos Evia, Virginia Tech
July 15, 2021

Are you in a management role, having overseen the process of hiring one or more entry-level or advanced-level technical communicators within the past five years? 

If yes, please take this survey to help us think through how technical communication education might evolve to better prepare students for entry-level content jobs and future leadership roles in the profession of technical communication. We are interested in learning from experts like you how the profession is changing and what skills and competencies you look for in new hires and why.   […]

Kathy Madison, Comtech Services
July 1, 2021

Are you creating localization-friendly content?  How has your content strategy evolved to support multiple languages and cultures? What challenges have you faced, and how have you addressed them? How did you go about choosing your localization partner? What tools are you using to make it easier for your writers to create international content? These were just a few of the topics discussed during a recent CIDM member roundtable discussion. […]

Vaijayanti Nerkar and Priya Shetye, BMC Software 
July 1, 2021

A few years back when BMC Software decided to tap the SaaS markets, the company started to invest in developing cloud-based products. For more than 20 years the BMC Software products were quintessentially on-premises products thus, our documentation strategy was centered around delivering information for an on-premises model. When we entered the cloud-based markets, we quickly realized that we would need a new strategy for the SaaS products. The move to SaaS brought about a lot of changes around installations, upgrade policies, patch policies, and so on.  Thus, it became important to formulate a documentation strategy specific to SaaS products. We could tell that it was going to be very different from what we were using for 20 odd years. […]

Lindsay Baer and Kevin Bruckner, IBM 
June 15, 2021

Whether your content needs a simple refresh or a complete overhaul, it can be an overwhelming process to begin. Understanding where to start, what to prioritize, and how to meet the needs of your users can sometimes seem like a tall order. At IBM, our content team faced this situation as we sought to transform the technical documentation that was found in our Knowledge Center. This library housed millions of links to documentation used to run and maintain IBM Z, a powerful and complex enterprise platform used to power critical aspects of the global economy. When we realized a content transformation was needed, we knew it was essential to take our time and make sure we had a plan. What we learned through research, implementation, and iteration has helped us develop a general framework of questions that can be applied to future transformations. […]

Shruti Deshpande
June 1, 2021

RWS is the global leader in content management and translation technology and services — 90 of the top 100 global companies work with us. Founded in 1958, RWS is headquartered in the UK and publicly listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange regulated market (RWS.L). Over the last 60 years, the company has built a reputation for quality, reliability and flexibility with its global team of translators, researchers and technical experts. RWS’s specialist divisions combine the latest technology, proven processes and highly skilled staff to deliver complex services at each stage of the product lifecycle to meet the diverse needs of a global, blue-chip client base spanning Europe, North America and Asia. […]

Sairam Venugopalan, Qualcomm
May 15, 2021

Not until so long ago, information developers were hemming content, out of raw engineering source materials and scientific data, in a palatable form for consumption as full-blown printed manuals or wholesome portable books. It is true that several organizations continue to render their product literature as fully downloadable PDFs or compiled help files, alongside modular or layered documentation in the form of standalone topics as Web files. However, most of us will quickly concur that it was fairly easier to manufacture and maintain content for whole-blown containers or publications than to chunk and comb content for modular or tiered topics. […]

Yashenka Nesmith
May 15, 2021

The Challenge of Continuous Development in Agile

At Workday, the Information Experience team in technical documentation operates in an Agile continuous development environment, where writers draft, edit, review, and publish documentation on a weekly basis. Teams make significant efforts to stay on top of product changes, collect material from stakeholders, and process content for publication — prioritizing content alignment without sacrificing quality. Everyone who participates in the process has different challenges and goals: […]

Amber Swope, DITA Strategies, Inc
May 1, 2021

Agile Information Architecture

Agile methodology is very popular in technology organizations because it provides a blueprint for organizing teamwork. However, developing information architecture (IA) in Agile can be difficult.

The biggest challenge is that every organization does Agile differently. This means that you have to identify your team’s flavor of Agile. One key variation is the sprint length — some organizations staunchly limit their sprints to two weeks, while other organizations stretch out their sprints to three or four weeks. Another variation is the terminology they use for Agile artifacts. Before you start planning, talk with your team to understand their approach. […]

Rekha Raman and Macy Douglas, ServiceNow
April 15, 2021

According to the Institute for the Future, cognitive load coping, which is defined as our ability to discriminate and filter information of importance, is one of the most valuable skills needed to manage information coming at us from all directions. We have new technologies that continuously improve the quality of our lives — whether it is at work or at home — and we need to keep pace with them.

Here at ServiceNow, we automate workflows to make work, work better for people. We recently launched a product, Workforce Optimization for ITSM, that enables managers to manage and maintain the productivity of their workforce from a single location. […]