Description
- Organization
- IBM Digital Business Automation, Enterprise Content Management
- My Role
- Author of technical publications for IBM Datacap software. Stakeholder on a team that included developers, testers, and support personnel.
- Goal
- Provide task, concept, and reference information to users of IBM Datacap software.
Provide rapid publishing to prevent customer escalations to the Support team.
Reorganize product information to improve retrievability and clarity.
- Skills
-
- Software documentation
- Collaboration
Writing samples
IBM Datacap is a document ingestion software solution for large businesses.
I joined a team that was based overseas and was challenged to provide quality documentation.
My contributions include various sections in all supported versions of product documentation.
Many other writers contributed to the product documentation. None of the topics that I updated were reviewed by an editor.
One challenging project involved reducing the number of topics in the Knowledge Center Datacap collections as part of a corporate mandate.
I enjoyed the challenge of building plugins that hadn't been built in years; some of which were missing source files.
Two notable projects involved leveraging work that hadn't yet resulted in quality document updates.
The first project involved re-organizing the Developing Applications section of the V9.1.7 Datacap Knowledge Center.
Developing applications is a key task for Datacap customers and a frequently cited pain point in customer feedback.
A project several years earlier suggested a new information organization that would more closely align with users' tasks.
I modified the plan to accomodate recent changes and implemented the solution in a fairly short time.
Compare the previous upgrade information (V9.1.6) with my improvement in V9.1.7:
The second project involved improving product upgrade instructions.
Customers and the Support team reported pain with upgrades.
A couple of years earlier, testers recorded their steps from several upgrade paths.
I used their information, exercised the installation myself, and developed a universal upgrade instruction.
Compare the previous upgrade information (V9.1.5) with my improvement in V9.1.6 and later versions.
The earlier versions contain inaccurate and contradictory topics.
The later versions orchestrate new, modified, and accurate legacy information to provide an unambiguous upgrade path from any supported version to any later supported version.
High-level instructions provide a summary for experienced users; links to detailed instructions are available for those who need them.