Life Cycle of Software Development

Life Cycle of Software Development.

Now we are four

It was Cherryleaf's fourth anniversary (or "Cherryversary", as our Director of Training called it) over the weekend. The past four years have flown by, with many new opportunities and markets appearing in that time.

Over the weekend, I received an email asking some very interesting questions. I've listed these below, together with the answers.

1. What kind of clients and customers are you looking for?

Clients that need to describe to their users (or staff) how to do key tasks. These are often developers of software needing online Help, user manuals or training guides.

2. What markets are you looking to develop?

Our main markets are the UK and the rest of Europe. We deal mainly in software, IT, financial and oil sectors.

We are also rolling out electronic products to offer to our prospects in India, USA, Canada and Australia. We are interested in talking to anyone who has e-books or e-courses related to writing, technical documentation etc. and wants a new channel to market.

3. How can I help market your services and/or products?

You can help by connecting us to anyone who might have a need for our services.

We've also written a self-study training course called "Network to Get Work". We're interested in talking to anyone who might want to be an affiliate for that (i.e resell it) or might want to licence it as a classroom course.

Death of the Technical Author - Part 2?

The two most popular articles on our Web site were, for a long time, "The Death of the Technical Author" and "The future of Help? Nine trends in user assistance". Our latest article is probably the closest to a follow up article for these.

It's called "New trends - applying Web 2.0 technologies to technical documentation", although we could have written it slightly differently and called it "The Death of the Technical Author - Part 2".


Here's a fuller report on these new trends in technical documentation.

Another interesting Web 2.0 application

I'm not sure how it could be used by a technical author in technical documents, but it's fun to use anyhow.

Managing Documentation Projects

One of the themes we've come across recently is issues to do with managing documentation projects when you are using an external technical author or technical writing company.

Nad Rosenberg did a presentation at the STC region 2 conference on the tools she'd developed for her business. It led us to think about the tools we provide to our customers in the key areas of time accounting, project status reporting, work order requests and change requests, and whether we could improve them.

So we have improved them.

For clients that have a regular requirement for documentation or want to outsource their documentation, we can offer access to an extranet for managing documentation projects. This extranet is focused on:

- communicating project status,
- scheduling of new work orders,
- scheduling tasks and responsibilities, and
- providing a repository for project files.

Management of documentation projects is like all other types of project management - it's about communication.

New software releases from Madcap

Madcap has released two of the products it was showing at last week's STC conferenece.

MadCap Capture is a screen capture utility "designed specifically with the documentation specialist in mind". "Authors can now produce “single-source images,” a new concept in the field of Help documentation. From a single image, an author can generate an output file appropriate for online Help (e.g., low resolution, color) and another output file for a printed manual (e.g., high resolution, gray scale), sending the output to Microsoft Word or Adobe FrameMaker."

MadCap Help Viewer is a freely redistributable content viewer that is based on Microsoft’s .NET framework. DotNet Help, a new format developed by MadCap Software, has a customizable interface that is much more modern looking than the HTML Help Viewer.

Advantages and benefits of using DotNet Help are:
• Embedded context-sensitive Help – “Dynamic Help”
• New modern Help look-and-feel for .NET applications
• Seamlessly integrate, embed and view software tutorials
• No security warnings and limitations as with the traditional CHM viewer

Madcap really seems to have the ball rolling at the moment.

My STC audio diary

I created an audio diary of my impression of the STC Region 2 conference for my work colleagues. In case it's of interest to anyone else, here's a link to it - audio diary.

STC Region 2 Conference

On Friday, I was at the STC Region 2's conference in London. I thoroughly enjoyed being a delegate rather than a speaker, for a change. I bumped into a lot of people with whom I've swapped emails or talked to on the phone. It was good to catch up with Paula Berger as well, now an STC bigwig, who I've known for many years.

One of the main themes was how to manage requirements which keep changing. Technical authoring companies (like Cherryleaf) seemed to have this buttoned, but the speakers who were within organisations were saying they really struggled with this. One of the other highlights was Patrick Hofmann's presentation on wordless manuals - very good.

I'm hoping to put together an audio diary/podcast on the conference, which I'll upload to the Cherryleaf Web site for people to download and listen.

ISTC conference presentation

Here's a clip from my presentation at the ISTC conference yesterday. Unfortunately, the room was very dark, so the video quality is poor.



Overall, I think the conference was a success. There were 50% more attendees and quite a wide variety of topics disucssed: managing projects, future trends, usability of forms, selling services, localisation, DITA, offshoring and content management.

More details on Report on Tech Writing 2.0: New trends in user documentation.

Have we mis-spelt "organisation" ?

On our Web site it says: "Organisations either tackle change themselves or they use an outside body. We are an extension to your internal resources."

You might be thinking, it's 'organization', surely?

This is one of those situations where there are two nations separated by a common language! We're based in the United Kingdom, where "organisation" is the preferred spelling. "Organization" is acceptable here as well (indeed, -ize is preferred by the OED), but most Britons, mistakenly, would see it as a misspelling.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary has an entry for "organisation".

When we're working for clients, we use British English or American English spellings, according to their preference.