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Quality in Tough Times

In tough times with limited staffing and budget cuts, some writers feel that quality becomes harder than ever to achieve. How can you do quality work with fewer people, shorter deadlines, and more workload per person? This article describes several approaches that may help you maintain the quality of your work even in tough times.

Start by making a business case for quality

In tough times, the reputation of a company becomes even more critical as businesses compete for limited dollars in the marketplace. Accuracy and completeness of documentation can be key contributors to a company’s customer satisfaction. In addition, other factors such as organization, visual appeal, and task orientation may contribute to the kinds of reviews your company’s products receive in the trade press. Make sure that your project managers or company executives understand the relationship between quality documentation and company reputation, including customer satisfaction.

You might think that tough economic times are the worst moment to be trumpeting this message, but in fact the opposite might be true, depending on how you do it! Showing your executives how your work can contribute to keeping the company in business demonstrates that you understand business realities and that you are working for the success of the overall company, not just working to inappropriately suboptimize resources in your tech writing area.

That said, be sure your requests for resources or schedule changes are specifically tied to quality improvements that will be visible and meaningful to the customer or to the sales team. Help your executives or project managers understand and visualize the consequences of not making these improvements–how this will impact customer satisfaction, sales, or competitiveness in the marketplace.

Prioritize your quality investments wisely

Whether or not you win the business case battle described above, there are probably many small things you can do within the given resource and schedule constraints to maintain or improve the quality of your work. One concept that helps me think about a way to approach this is the Japanese concept of kaizen. Kaizen refers to slow, gradual, but continuous improvement. Over time, this can be more effective than sporadic giant leaps, such as restructuring a whole help system or converting all your documentation to XML. Smaller improvements can amass over time to have significant impact on overall quality. In tough times, it is much easier to think about improving the index a little bit this time, rather than trying to justify a brand new help system.

As you consider the many things that could be done to improve your information, or to maintain the quality level you have had in the past under more generous circumstances, force yourself to prioritize these improvements. What if you could only do three things this time to improve your information? What would they be and on what basis would you prioritize them as most important? Use a task-oriented analysis based on customer requirements to help you think through the prioritization. Some reasonable criteria for prioritization might include:

Improve the most frequently-used information (most common user tasks)

Improve the most complex information (most difficult user tasks)

Improve the most visible information (tasks performed first, such as installation)

Improve any areas for which you have received direct, negative customer feedback.

Using these criteria, identify the two or three improvements that would have the most impact for current customers, or potentially for the sales force as they try to sell this product to potential customers. If you really stick to just a few action items, it will be easier to include these items in your documentation plan and work them into existing schedules without justifying new resources or changing deadlines. You will know you have done something to improve your work, and eventually you can use these kinds of improvements to show your project manager or executive that documentation can make a difference for the company.

When all else fails…

One final comment: If you really feel that the quality of your work from a customer perspective will fall short of acceptable standards due to resource or schedule constraints, document these risks in your documentation plan or review them with your project manager to be sure he or she understands in advance the consequences of the project decisions being made. This does not include things you would love to do if you had the time; it should be limited to shortcomings that compromise the accuracy, completeness, retrievability, or task-orientation of your work. Presenting this in an informative manner, not as a threat, again shows that you are concerned about the success of the company and that you know the difference between good work and bad.

Summary

Using the approaches suggested above, you can continue to work toward quality goals even in tough times. You may not achieve everything you know could be done, but you can still make progress by focusing on the most important areas of your documentation for your customer, the reader.

About the Author: Lori Fisher, STC Fellow, is a member of the Silicon Valley Chapter.

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	Quality in Tough Times
	In tough times with limited staffing and budget cuts, some writers feel that quality becomes harder than ever to achieve. How can you do quality work with fewer people, shorter deadlines, and more workload per person? This article describes several approaches that may help you maintain the quality of your work even in tough times.
Start by making a business case for quality	In tough times, the reputation of a company becomes even more critical as businesses compete for limited dollars in the marketplace. Accuracy and completeness of documentation can be key contributors to a company’s customer satisfaction. In addition, other factors such as organization, visual appeal, and task orientation may contribute to the kinds of reviews your company’s products receive in the trade press. Make sure that your project managers or company executives understand the relationship between quality documentation and company reputation, including customer satisfaction. You might think that tough economic times are the worst moment to be trumpeting this message, but in fact the opposite might be true, depending on how you do it! Showing your executives how your work can contribute to keeping the company in business demonstrates that you understand business realities and that you are working for the success of the overall company, not just working to inappropriately suboptimize resources in your tech writing area. That said, be sure your requests for resources or schedule changes are specifically tied to quality improvements that will be visible and meaningful to the customer or to the sales team. Help your executives or project managers understand and visualize the consequences of *not* making these improvements–how this will impact customer satisfaction, sales, or competitiveness in the marketplace.
Prioritize your quality investments wisely	Whether or not you win the business case battle described above, there are probably many small things you can do within the given resource and schedule constraints to maintain or improve the quality of your work. One concept that helps me think about a way to approach this is the Japanese concept of kaizen. Kaizen refers to slow, gradual, but continuous improvement. Over time, this can be more effective than sporadic giant leaps, such as restructuring a whole help system or converting all your documentation to XML. Smaller improvements can amass over time to have significant impact on overall quality. In tough times, it is much easier to think about improving the index a little bit this time, rather than trying to justify a brand new help system. As you consider the many things that could be done to improve your information, or to maintain the quality level you have had in the past under more generous circumstances, force yourself to prioritize these improvements. What if you could only do three things this time to improve your information? What would they be and on what basis would you prioritize them as most important? Use a task-oriented analysis based on customer requirements to help you think through the prioritization. Some reasonable criteria for prioritization might include: Improve the most frequently-used information (most common user tasks) Improve the most complex information (most difficult user tasks) Improve the most visible information (tasks performed first, such as installation) Improve any areas for which you have received direct, negative customer feedback. Using these criteria, identify the two or three improvements that would have the most impact for current customers, or potentially for the sales force as they try to sell this product to potential customers. If you really stick to just a few action items, it will be easier to include these items in your documentation plan and work them into existing schedules without justifying new resources or changing deadlines. You will know you have done something to improve your work, and eventually you can use these kinds of improvements to show your project manager or executive that documentation can make a difference for the company.
When all else fails…	One final comment: If you really feel that the quality of your work from a customer perspective will fall short of acceptable standards due to resource or schedule constraints, document these risks in your documentation plan or review them with your project manager to be sure he or she understands in advance the consequences of the project decisions being made. This does not include things you would love to do if you had the time; it should be limited to shortcomings that compromise the accuracy, completeness, retrievability, or task-orientation of your work. Presenting this in an informative manner, not as a threat, again shows that you are concerned about the success of the company and that you know the difference between good work and bad.
Summary	Using the approaches suggested above, you can continue to work toward quality goals even in tough times. You may not achieve everything you know could be done, but you can still make progress by focusing on the most important areas of your documentation for your customer, the reader.
	About the Author: Lori Fisher, STC Fellow, is a member of the Silicon Valley Chapter. Back to top