Do You Manage Software Content?

I define software content as anything that you or your team creates that end-users consume. This ranges from technical communications, such as release notes, help articles, user guides, websites, or just plain old documents in your local drive. This also includes training content that could be internal or external facing, slides, training guides, videos, webinar recordings, SCORM/xAPI files, and on-boarding materials.

Stay on The Bus

Here is a problem with all of this, how do you keep up? I have worked in high-paced, agile environments, that are producing product changes at such a high pace and it never ends. The half-serious analogy at one company was this: the company was a bus moving at a high pace down the highway. The employees were hanging on for dear life, just trying to keep up with the bus. It moves fast.

A Poor Customer Experience

Once content is created in this sort of environment, it is likely already close to being out of date already. What does this lead to? A poor customer experience. When a customer is searching for help materials, taking online training, or just browsing a user forum, if they find that the information is out of date, this will lead to a lack of confidence in the product you are supporting.

A Better Way

Here is one concern in our industry, who is tracking all of this and staying current on their content? From what I have experienced, most executives don't even know this is an issue and could hurt overall customer satisfaction. Most teams are piecing these together in spreadsheets or just managing from their individual authoring tools, which can lead to silos of information.

We have found that at a minimum, teams producing SaaS content should have the following in place:

1. Content tracking system for all artifacts in one location

2. Ability to tag artifact owners

3. Capacity to set a audit schedule

4. Means to report to management the currency of all assets the team manages

I would love to know how you have stayed up "with the bus" in your software company and how you are able to demonstrate the value of your content. Leave a comment below.