Over the years we have developed our own processes, methods, and tool preferences that help us get reliable results with our projects. We describe some of our most important methodologies below.

• Expert Support's Documentation Methodology
• Documentation Suite Design and Plan
• Document Style Guide
• The Team Approach vs. Individual Contributor
• Publication Tools that We Use and Know Well
• Document Application Preferences

Expert Support's Documentation Methodology

Our documentation methodology is based on more than ten years of experience with hundreds of customers. It is both effective and practical. It is optimized to get to the right outcome with as little wasted energy as possible.

Our methodologies address three areas: documents, documentation suites, and project conduct. We think our techniques work well. Here is how we strive to run all of our projects:

• We start with a Statement of Work (SOW), which is a short document that describes what we think the assignment is, how much we think it is going to cost, and what the assumptions were when we created the estimates. You review this before we start the project, so if there are misunderstandings about subject, approach, extent, cost, or deadline, we can correct them right away.

• We like to work from a documentation plan or specification that lists all of the documents in the product's documentation suite. Usually the plan will give, for each document, the purpose, the audience, the expected length, the expected technical level, the technical sources, and the reviewers. We can write the documentation plan for you or we can use yours. A documentation plan is not required, but it is a very good thing to have for both us and you.

• If you need it, our production staff will design a document template for your documentation suite, which will define the details of the look and feel for your documents. It will also set up the paragraph and font styles that will make it easy for writers to follow those guidelines. The look can be any look that your company likes or specifies. We will make sure that the template allows you to use a single source for all the media that you need, whether paper manuals, web pages, or help files.

• If you don't have one already, we highly recommend that you have us create a document style guide for you. It covers topics such as consistent use of terms, style of language, grammatical decisions, and so on.

• If you are so inclined (and we strongly suggest it), we will do a developmental edit of the document after the first chapter or two is done. In a developmental edit, a senior editor or technical writer, other than the author, critiques the manual. The editor may suggest improvements in terminology, format, approach, level, or tone. This edit performs the same function as a design review in software development. Because a developmental edit takes place early, it can lead to huge improvements in quality at relatively little cost.

• If the document and the schedule allow, we will write the document iteratively. That is, we will make multiple passes through the document, filling in the blank spots, improving and deepening the manual on each pass, but always leaving you with a reviewable version. This means that if you need documentation for that terribly important beta-test customer, we will have something ready for you that will not be embarrassing.

• When the document is nearly done, we will send the document to our staff of technical editors for a copy edit. This is a low-cost way of catching typos and other errors that the author and the reviewers can no longer see.

• If you wish, our professional indexers will add an index to your document. This is particularly helpful for reference documentation, where the index may be the reader's primary point of entry to the document. A good index can make the document infinitely more accessible to the reader.

• Throughout the project, we will send you weekly status reports, usually by email and usually on Monday. These reports let you know what we accomplished in the last week and what we plan to do in the coming week. In addition, status reports are a vehicle for us to raise any project issues to your attention. You will always know how the project is proceeding.

• After the project is over, we will ask your opinion on the quality of the document and the quality of Expert Support as a supplier. This gives you a chance to point out ways we can improve and it helps us to keep up our standards of quality.

I want to express my pleasure with the work
ESI did on our manuals.
When I have a need for contract work in the future,
I will definitely call on Expert Support first.
—Kathryn E. Barry, Openwave

Document Style Guide

Almost every well-established company that uses multiple writers has a style guide. This document can be relatively short (3-5 pages) or quite long (80+ pages). The idea is to give each writer and editor a clear understanding of what is expected of each document. Style guides usually contain:

• Information about specific grammatical rules that are often at the discretion of the writer, such as how commas are used in multiple item lists
• Suggested tone and voice of writing
• Correct spelling and usage of terms, especially those that are coined by the organization
• Legal requirements, trademark guidelines, and product branding usage
• How graphics/screenshots should be presented
• How to perform version identification, dating, and distribution

We can help you create or maintain a style guide for your organization. We are also quite willing to use your style guide on projects we do for you.

The Team Approach vs. Individual Contributor

Many of our customers ask for a single writer to perform a particular task that they want accomplished. This is the "job shop" or "writer for hire" model for a project, and of course, we will oblige any customer that makes such a request by assigning an individual contributor.

However, through many years of experience, we have determined that the "one writer for one project" assignment is often not the most effective way to cost-effectively produce top-quality results. In fact, we strongly encourage our customers to let us determine how to best staff the assignment as we get better acquainted with what needs to be done. Yes, there will always be a single writer or project manager who will have the responsibility for delivering the final product to the customer; however, whether we use one person or eight people on a project depends a great deal on the schedule, the skills needed, and the continuity needed between the different project tasks.

We often assign an editor, an indexer, and a graphic artist to be at a writer's disposal when a project starts. This lowers the cost of some of the activities and also provides fresh eyes to look at a document before it goes to production.

In cases where the schedule is very tight or downright impossible, we assign a second writer to be at the disposal of the primary writer. This allows the primary writer to delegate tasks that are separable (and don't require as much understanding of the project). This usually takes significant pressure off the primary writer and ensures that we meet the development schedule. Our writers are good enough at doing this that we also stay within the original budget despite adding the new resource.

Oh yes, and all this is totally transparent to our customers, unless they want to be involved in the details.