Guest post by John Hawkins.
First Strategy, Then Requirements
In 22 years as a technical writer who has morphed into a “knowledge management consultant,” I have experienced requirements at many different levels.
The first type of requirement is the client who says, “This is the tool we use; do you know it?” To which the experienced technical writer responds either, “Yes” or “No, but I can learn it quickly. Anyway, it’s not about the tools; it’s about creating content.”
Another type of requirement is a client who knows that something is not working well and decides that a new tool is the answer. While that may be true, looking at tools to fix a problem with how you create and manage content may lead you to incremental improvements that don’t provide much new capability.
In large organizations, or sometimes even in small ones, the quest for new tools can assume gargantuan proportions. The search can become a multi-year extravaganza that has little to do with your actual content needs, much less the needs of your business. Requirements can grow to hundreds of pages of detailed specifications about application features that may or may not relate to business strategy.
The best requirements grow from a careful consideration of business strategy, followed by a high-level view of the capabilities needed to support that strategy. It’s also important to realize that tools are only part of the picture; an organization’s skills, workflow processes, and content strategy will also play a large part in achieving business goals.
Because even when the stakes are large, it’s really not about the tools. An experienced technical writer or a knowledge management consultant knows that tools are just a means to an end. Learning new tools is part of the job; but the real trick is understanding how content serves your organization and creates value.
To learn more about this, please join me for my Live Web Seminar, “Creating and Managing Requirements for a New Content Strategy,” on Wednesday, 19 May 2010, from 1-2 PM EDT (GMT-4). Click the link for more information or to register!