Revamping All Product Documentation

Goal

Restructure, redesign, and rewrite 6,000+ pages of product documentation to optimize organic search, improve content accuracy, and as a result, reduce the call driver volume.

Role

Project lead

Timeline

The project took 15 months to complete, from inception to the final deliverable.

Approach

After identifying my key cross-functional partners, I facilitated a discovery workshop to frame the project goal through the lens of the customer and the business owners and define the work scope.

We created a detailed customer journey map pinpointing the critical friction points, completed a best-in-class assessment, and aligned on the new taxonomy, tonality, and design. To verify our assumptions, we quickly built a prototype and tested it with actual users. We took their feedback, made some improvements, then tested it again. The results confirmed that we were on the right track.

Next, I developed a comprehensive project plan and timeline, which served as the roadmap for our project. I also established key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure our progress and ensure alignment with our overall goals.

To successfully execute the project, I hired and onboarded additional resources with the requisite skill sets. Once everyone was onboarded, I conducted a second workshop that enabled us to define clear roles and responsibilities, establish an effective engagement model, train all content creators, and agree on an escalation path.

To promote transparency and facilitate efficient tracking of project activities, we leveraged Jira, a project management tool, to monitor progress closely. Additionally, I prepared weekly status reports, which provided senior executives with a comprehensive overview of the project status.

Despite a turnover of resources and the migration of content to DITA XML, a modular and reusable content architecture, in the mid-project phase, we successfully delivered the work within the stipulated timelines and achieved impressive results. Specifically, we reduced the number of pages by more than 20%, substantially improving the user experience. Our efforts also led to an impressive 300% increase in user satisfaction with the product documentation and a 23% decrease in call volume.

Deliverables

Our deliverables included a user journey map, static prototypes for user testing, a process map, UX content and SEO guidelines, progress and KPI trackers.