crowdsourcing your documentation: managing a crowdsourced documentation project

Crowdsourcing your documentation Ma n ag i n g a c rowd sou rce d d o cu m e n t at i o n p ro j e c t

s g r i f f i n @ a t l a s s i a n . c o m | t w i t t e r : @ s u b e g e

S u s a n G r i f f i n • T r a i n i n g P r o g r a m M a n a g e r • A t l a s s i a n

Benjamin Franklin

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

About me •  Technical communicator 25+ years

•  Traditional and non-traditional roles

•  “Never say never”

Interesting fact: This is my third visit to Germany in 12 months. I think it’s time for me to learn to speak German!

What if… Your manager came to you and said:

We are opening a new Support office in Austin, Texas, in four months and we need a brand new training program by the time that office opens.

We can’t give you a writer, but you can use some of the Senior Support Engineers in our other offices to help you create the program.

Don’t forget to breathe.*

(*someone actually said that to me)

We want this training program to be used by the 60+ new hires we plan on adding in Austin by the end of this year, and it needs to include a 30-day induction plan.

•  Collaborative workforce or intelligence

How many of you have heard of…

•  Coordinated crowd activities

•  Open innovation

•  Social collaboration

Jeff Howe, Wired magazine, 2006

“Simply defined, crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call.”

However…

•  Figure out who your experts are

Keeping this in mind

•  Create a core team, with a mission statement

•  Set up weekly, even biweekly, meetings

•  Communicate through all available channels

•  Have a clearly defined road map and goals

•  Factor in the geographical differences

Figure out who your experts are

•  If one expert doesn’t know something, find another who does

•  Get buy-in from everyone’s manager

Mission Statement:

The GSD team will review, update, and comment wrangle the Support procedural information that forms one part of Support Training Program. Our goal is to complete this work by the Austin site launch, or APRIL 8, 2014.

The Get Stuff Done Team

•  Review the documentation and provide feedback to other members of this team by the requested date.

Set expectations

•  Attend weekly meetings.

•  Provide feedback in comments in the restricted site.

•  Monitor and respond to comments from the rest of Support.

•  Even if the path changes, know where you are going.

Road map and clear goals

•  Know the sacrifices you are willing to make…

•  And the ones that cannot be made.

At the beginning…

•  Hundreds of pages of Support training materials spread out across all of EAC and several other systems.

•  No one knows where everything is, content is created and abandoned. Duplicate content exists everywhere.

•  The content organization isn’t apparent, making it hard to find things.

•  Each time we have a new starter, team leads need to create a training schedule. No one uses anything approaching the same format.

•  We are in a constant state of “reinventing” the training materials, which is time-consuming and frustrating for everyone.

The current state of play*

* Data from about 60 hours of informational interviews with individuals across the C4L team.

•  Everyone understands “The Code of Legendary Service” and knows what this means when they interact with customers.

•  Day-to-day business procedures are the same across all Geos (or as close as possible, and we start from the same baseline procedure).

•  New starters are able to get up to speed within 90 days and understand the “how and why” of our products and tools.

•  The training materials are professionally written, consistent, and regularly updated.

•  We create a standard that other departments want to follow.

We want a program where:

•  One space to rule them all: Support Training content lives in one place on EAC.

•  We provide information on the three pillars of Atlassian Support:

•  Philosophy/Values (our code of service).

•  Procedures: how to do your job.

•  Technical training: we are consumers of the great content coming from Sherry’s team as well as content we create.

•  Our materials are well written, consistent, and regularly updated.

What does this look like?

How does this help the business? Over time, we should see the following:

•  New hires come up to speed quicker (goal: half the time it takes currently, or 90 days).

•  We can expand Support faster if we reduce the amount of time a TL can expect to spend one-on-one with new hires.

•  We have more expertise spread across the business.

•  We have everyone speaking the same language and operating in the same ways, so our customers get a consistently good experience.

How do we accomplish this? •  Engage all key stakeholders across the team (started Dec

2013)

•  Evaluate current materials (in progress)

•  Form a small, core group of senior support staff to review and update procedures (starts this week)

•  Outline what can be accomplished, by when (this presentation)

•  Create a timeline (next slide)

GETTING STARTED

•  Susan •  Rick •  Michael A. •  EMEA (TBD)

DATA GATHERING

•  Susan

ONBOARDING

•  Susan •  Ning

The road ahead, part one

DOC REVIEW (Support Induction)

•  Susan •  Rick •  Michael A. •  EMEA (TBD) •  KL leads •  Tim •  Daniel R. •  Others as needed

DEC 13 – FEB 14 JAN – MAR 14 MAR – MAY 14 JAN – MAY 14

6 weeks so far, another

6 weeks needed

The GSD* team

Various SMEs

Yet to be scoped

* My senior support engineer advisory committee

TECHNICAL FOUNDATION

•  Susan •  Tim

LEGENDARY SERVICE

•  Susan •  Partha •  Jim C.

DOC CREATION

•  Susan •  Writer (TBH)

The road ahead, part two

PRODUCT TRAINING

•  Susan •  Sherry & team •  Writer (TBH)

JAN – MAR 14 JAN – MAR 14 MAR – ONGOING 14 JAN – MAY 14

Partha to outline

objectives to Jim

Courses coming

starting in Feb

List of docs to create will come

out of GSD In progress

What can be delivered by April 1

TECHNICAL FOUNDATION Susan/Tim Updates to existing content only.

NEW SUPPORT TRAINING SITE*

Susan Make site live, move content over. Stuff will break during this time.

PRODUCT TRAINING

Sherry’s team JIRA Essentials JIRA Agile in Practice JIRA/Confluence Integration JIRA Admin Getting Started with Confluence Getting Started with Git and Stash

MAR – APR 14 MAR – APR 14 FEB – APR 14

Assuming 100% of Susan’s time, some portion of the GSD team’s time, as well as some of Ning’s time.

How I kept track

•  Use what you know and are comfortable with, but…

•  If others can contribute as well, that will make your job easier.

•  Don’t be afraid to try something new! You might discover a tool that works better for you.

Project tracking tools

My project tracker

Project workflow

Issue example

•  Have a meeting schedule and stick to it.

Find communication that works

•  Hold people accountable for deliverables.

•  Sometimes you won’t be popular.

Communication/Collaboration tools

•  Blogs

Spread the word

•  Forums

•  Any other internal means of communicating to a wide audience

Ongoing Maintenance

•  New projects need new owners

Post-Launch Activities

•  The challenge of the remote team

•  Assessing progress and making changes

Juggling time zones isn’t easy

•  Survey feedback

How do you measure success?

•  Changes in NPS (net promoter score) and/or KPI (key performance indicator)

•  Test scores

Thank you!

S u s a n G r i f f i n • T r a i n i n g P r o g r a m M a n a g e r • A t l a s s i a n

s g r i f f i n @ a t l a s s i a n . c o m | t w i t t e r : @ s u b e g e

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