Nine Writers, Nine Agile Teams, One Voice

This session will highlight the specialized workflows and departmental procedures that cPanel uses to overcome the inevitable conflicts when nine writers from nine different teams work on the same set of documents.

• Agile teams alone can cause headaches, even when each team is working on a separate project. We'll talk about how to use a writer-as-developer mindset to instantly transform how your company—and you—think about documentation's role in the release cycle. This mindset is vital to integrating with development teams (and convincing them we should be there).
• When updating a vast documentation set of thousands of documents, scoping updates for iterative projects is vital. We'll talk about how cPanel's writers use a set workflow to determine update needs in advance and convey those needs to developers and stakeholders.
• cPanel, Inc. doesn't employ a full-time editor, but we maintain a very specific style guide and use a peer-review process to ensure quality. We'll talk about the life cycle of new documentation and the processes we use at each step. We'll also cover implementing a peer review process, how to keep sensitive reviews friendly, and how we use the peer review process to “grow” better writers.
• cPanel's writers update documentation for new development and respond to requests for maintenance, corrections, and improvements. We'll talk about how the maintenance and improvement workflow differs from new documentation and how we work with our Support department to fulfill their needs.
• Finding a content management system with the right support for a large team of writers can be difficult. We'll talk about how cPanel uses a unique Confluence setup and publishing procedures to manage traffic jams.