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First of all, congratulations with such an interesting
assignment. From the looks of it, the company
recognizes the added value of a technical writer, and
they're willing to give you room to explore some new
grounds.
Having said that, I think that your assignment is way
too big for just two months. Try to narrow it down to
something less haunting. It's much more interesting
for you, your tutors and your future employers to see
the results of some detailed and thorough research on
a small topic than a general impression of a very
broad topic. I don't know how much room for discussion
you have, or how your internship is arranged. Do you
perhaps have some kind of mentor or coach that can
give you some guidance?
Some advise:
- First and foremost: keep things simple.
You say that you need to write documentation from
scratch. Is there any other kind of documentation yet?
If not, the need for a complex content management
system is not that obvious to me.
* Focus on the model, rather than the tools
There are literally thousands of content management
systems available, and none of them work. Unless you
have properly modelled your workflow and the structure
of your information. You probably do your company a
bigger service by giving them an accurate model which
they can use as a basis for any content management
system, than telling them which system to use.
Keep in mind that a content management model usually
has two aspects:
-information about documents and workflow (so that you
can keep track of changes, versions, revisions). This
is what you partly described in your Excel document.
-information about structure (metadata like subject,
target audience, kind of information). This is what
makes your information retrievable from a content
management system. Without it, a content management
system is worthless.
* Spend some time thinking about information structure
Dedicate some time to a proper user-task analysis. A
good analysis tells you (amongst others):
-which products are there
-which user groups use which products
-which tasks are performed by each user group
-which procedures (step-by-step actions) need to be
performed to accomplish a task.
If you know the answers to these questions, you have
basically collected your first set of metadata, or
characteristics of information. Users of a content
management system can use these characteristics to
query the system:
"I am the administrator (user group) of the Gooble CRM
software package (product), and I want to add a new
user to the system (task). What steps do I need to
perform to do this? (procedure)"
Here too, keep it simple. You're an intern, and your
company can't reasonably expect you to model their
entire information pool in two months. Just show them
that you grasp the principles of information
modelling; if they want more, let them hire you :-)
* Use your writing assignment to model a workflow
Keep a diary of all the activities that are involved
with each document production stage. For example:
before you start writing, you will probably need some
information about your audience and your subject
matter. This is commonly known as the investigation
stage, and has some tangible deliveries. You can only
move on the writing stage when these deliviries have
been produced.
You can set up a simple flow of stages and transitions
that reflects your way of working and use that for
things like version control, project tracking etc.
I think that you are already doing a great job by
asking us these questions and not just doing what your
company tells you to do. Inquisitiveness is one of the
biggest assets a technical writer can have.
Best of luck, and don't hesitate to contact me if you
need any help.
Maaike
=======================
Maaike Groenewege
Technical writer
Hendrikx van der Spek
Bussum
The Netherlands
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