Underestimating Information Development (aka TechComm) services has been a known issue in lots of companies. I want to share my experience in building a team of professionals, promoting your expertise within the company as well as to the clients, and setting up a collaborative environment with InfoDev experts involved. I know, this experience may be valuable to young teams who strive to prove their value and engage into the full product development workflow within the companies, and also to the established teams who are underestimated in their companies or on their projects.

1. Introducing
TechComm Terra Incognita
to Your Company. How We Did It
by Kateryna Sanyk
Head of Information Development Office at ELEKS

2. ● Head of the Information Development Office
in ELEKS Ltd.
● Proud to live in Lviv, one of the most
beautiful cities of Ukraine
● Passionate about matters concerning
content and usability
● Believe that users do read documentation
● Love winter and skiing
● Fan of impressionism in art
About me

3. Agenda
● No one reads documentation – truth or myth?
● Short case study of how we built an Information
Development Office almost from scratch.
● Things to consider when building the team
● Discoveries that dawned on me
● Top-5 lessons learned
● Plans and aspirations

4. Users do not read documentation

5. In fact, they are smart to do so because
● You don’t target your audience
● You have hazy knowledge of your application
● Your documentation is excessive
● The major use cases are not covered
● Poor navigation and searchability
● Poor structuring and layout

6. Think about the users
when creating any type of content
on the project, and you will prove your
team that documentation is an
essential part of a great product.

7. Challenges I faced when I joined the
company
● Little or no people knew about Technical Writers
● Prejudice against Technical Writers as non-techy fellows
● Regarding Technical Writers as proofreaders of the
developers’ documents
● Little or no success stories communicated internally
● No processes and standards enforced
● Several departments doing similar job

8. Concepts substitution
Competence development
Technical Writer
vs.
Information Developer
- InfoDev basic trainings
- Knowledge Base
- Standards and processes
- Planning
Competence promotion
Integration
- Company-wide presentations about
the “new” competence
- Presentations to interested parties
- Expert talks
- Analysis of documentation on the
existing projects
- Analysis of projects without
documentation and help on starting
documentation
- “Magic pairs”
Top-priority things I did first

9. Unexpected discoveries
● Enforcing processes and standards leads to simplifying
daily workflows rather than complicating them
● If you prove your expertise and value, the team starts
perceiving you as an integral part
● Hiring right people is crucial to the team success and
development
● Never put borders between your employees and yourself
to get a highly motivated and inspired team

10. Achievements for the 2 years
● Separating as an independent structural unit within the
company
● 3x growth
● Established onboarding and mentoring processes
● Involvement on the initial project stages
● Involvement into presales activities
● Adding documentation standards to the project
development process
● Professional blog established (informaze.wordpress.com)

11. Lessons learned
1. Communicate
2. Collaborate
3. Blend in
4. Take extra responsibilities
5. Be firm
6. Value

12. What’s next?
● Put users before documentation
● Think of the real value your documentation brings to
users
● Standardize
● Innovate
● Be integral part of the development team
● Promote yourself

13. Documentation
is not a cherry
on top of the
cake – it is the
cream!

14. Thank you!

15. My contacts:
Linkedin: https://ua.linkedin.com/pub/kateryna-sasnyk/16/80/847
Twitter: @tiny_Namystynka
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kateryna.sasnyk
Email: kateryna.sasnyk@eleks.com
Blog: https://informaze.wordpress.com