Designing a Document Development Process

A document-development process should be used to ensure the quality of document deliverables. A document-development process (or set of processes) can be used to create automated document-development workflows in a functioning document management system (DMS) to expedite those processes.

A mature document-development process consists of the following five stages:

1.     Identifying the document

2.     Scheduling the document

3.     Developing the document

4.     Publishing the document

5.     Managing the document

Identifying the Document

In this phase, someone in an organization identifies the need for a particular document to be formally developed and published. The document can be any type of technical document across any area. To initiate the development of that document, a person (known as the document owner) contacts the document manager to formally identify this need. To be formally recognized and published, a document must follow the entire formal document-development process—the document owner cannot choose which parts of the document-development process to participate in and then expect the document to be formally published.   

Scheduling the Document

The document manager schedules a meeting with the document owner to create a project schedule. The project schedule reflects the core document-development process along with the appropriate dates for each stage in the process. The project schedule also reflects the persons responsible for each stage of the document-development process including the person who is responsible for authoring the document, the persons responsible for the various editing stages, and, if necessary, the particular manager who is responsible for reviewing and approving the document prior to publication.

Developing the Document

This process stage helps to make documents technically accurate, technically complete, logically structured, readable, and formatted appropriately. This phase of the process includes the following three stages and sub-stages:

1.     Technical Authoring

2.     Knowledge Editing

3.     Language Editing

4.     Layout Editing

5.     Management Editing

6.     Final Editing

7.     Publishing

Technical Authoring

The technical writer identifies the proper template (or creates a template when the appropriate template does not exist). The technical writer then researches and writes the document using the identified template. There are cases in which the technical writer is not the author of a technical document but is assisting a subject matter expert (SME) who is acting as the author. In this case, the technical writer provides periodic writing guidance if the author is having difficulty writing the document. Once the author develops a relatively mature baseline draft, the author notifies the technical writer that the technical authoring stage is complete.

Knowledge Editing

The technical writer sends the document to SMEs for knowledge editing. Knowledge editing ensures that the document’s technical subject matter is accurate and complete and that it is logical.

Language Editing and Layout Editing

Once the SMEs have performed their knowledge editing and the author has incorporated the knowledge edits into the document, the technical editor begins language editing and layout editing. Language editing ensures that the document’s text has clarity, correct grammar, correct punctuation, and correct spelling as well as the proper navigational elements including front and back matter, headers and footers, cross-references, and numbering; language editing also ensures that the text adheres to the officially recognized style guides. (Recommended style guides include The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition, for general style principles and the Microsoft Manual of Style, 4th edition, for IT-related style principles.) Layout editing ensures that the document adheres to the standard appearance for documents; document elements that are examined during layout editing include margins, spacing, borders, and fonts. Once the technical editor has performed the language editing and layout editing and the author has incorporated those edits into the document, the technical editor sends the document to the appropriate manager for management editing, if necessary.

Management Editing

If necessary, the appropriate manager will review the document to ensure that the document contains nothing objectionable. If the manager feels that the document contains nothing objectionable, the manager can approve the document for formal publication. If the manager makes edits to the document, the author will incorporate the edits and will then notify the technical editor that the document is ready for final editing.

Final Editing

The technical editor ensures that there are no remaining edits or comments in the document and that the document has no discernible errors. The technical editor performs a standard set of edits throughout the document to ensure that basic document elements are correct.

Publishing the Document

The technical writer (or SME author) publishes the document in the central document repository or in the appropriate project repository and sends a notice to the appropriate people announcing the published document.

Managing the Document

Throughout the document-development process, the document manager manages the document-development process. The document manager helps the document to get to the appropriate people. The technical writer is primarily responsible for prompting assigned SME authors to write their documents, for prompting SMEs to edit documents given to them for the knowledge editing stage, and for prompting technical editors to edit documents given to them for the language and layout editing stages; however, significant development issues at any of these stages are and should be escalated to the document manager for resolution. The document manager is responsible for tracking and reporting the statuses of documents in development and whether a document is on schedule or is past due. If a document is past due, the document manager is responsible for deciding whether to postpone a document’s development because assigned resources (authors and SMEs) are overextended or to continue a document’s development by directing the assigned resources to make a document’s development a priority.