Re: How to approach this task?
....What the IT group needs is someone to come in and organize/orchestrate the info and business processes involved in getting stuff onto the site. Customer support, bug reporting/tracking system, all the things a modern software company site should have.
They are growing rapidly, and some of the necessary information is recorded only in the minds of IT staff. They do have a wiki, but even that apparently has major navigational issues.
Wiki navigational issues are easy to fix, since you can hang links anywhere you need them, and can inlay keywords for search listings, and the page titles all backlink automatically (in most wiki incarnations).
My background is in documenting programming languages, their related tools, and APIs -- addressing the programmer audience, but the CUSTOMER programmer. This task's audience is in house. When new people come on board, there is no set of documentation, help screens, written procedures for them -- they have to learn from the existing staff.
How do you go about mining and organizing such material?
Treat it like a language doc job, blocking the info SLOTS (not the info, just yet) into tasks, then develop and demo each procedure in its place, in an online Help system built in the wiki. One way is to use the TWIT method -- brief article at http://jersblog.com/Help+authoring.htm (oiginally developed for newbie tech writers, but at least it'll give you a running start). Sounds like a great job! You're sure to have fun with it.
---- Jerry Muelver
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References:
How to approach this task?: From: Guy K. Haas
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