Need to Reboot Your Content Creation Strategy?
Start with "No"
Keith Boyd
Microsoft Corporation
About me
• 14 years at Microsoft, all in technical content.• 12 years in management.• 2000-2013 Windows writer and manager• 2013-present Principal Director, Content Services
and International (CSI) in the Cloud & Enterprise division (Azure, Visual Studio, .NET)– Team owns roughly 10 million content assets as well
as the MSDN print and online magazine.• Past-president, Western WA University Alumni
Association.@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Staffing vs. platform growth
XP
Vista
Windows 7
Windows 8/8.1
With each release of Windows, the dev platform grew in size-- most dramatically during Windows Vista and Windows 8 development…
XPVista
Windows 7Windows 8
Windows 10
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
Programming-Writer population at Microsoft
… while staffing actually *decreased*, somewhat dramatically (values are approximate).
Thousands of topics
Millions of topics
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Why did staffing shift so dramatically?
• Before 2005 there were very few sites detailing how to build Windows apps, services, or drivers.
• As market forces changed, the balance of personnel investment also changed.
• Technical communicators failed to consistently demonstrate their value relative to other disciplines.
• Microsoft didn’t need scribes, it needed SMEs.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Content innovation vs. fundamentals
High
Low High
$$Too expensiveto be practicalfor most teams
Untenable – no team would acceptresults at this level
Innovation
Fundamentals
Most content teams at Microsoft fell somewhere on the red line, generally doing neither fundamentals or innovation well. No wonder staffing suffered. What to do?
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Win8: four principles
In order to maximize resources and deliver greater value, we adopted four principles:
1.Less is more
2.Code first
3.Embrace a modern voice and tone
4.Be data driven
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
PRINCIPLE: LESS IS MORE
Too much content obfuscates and dilutes the important stuff
The painful truth…
3 primary reasons people come to MSDN:1. To get the bits, or to provision an account.
2. To “Get Started” quickly with a product or service.
3. To get help when they’re stuck.• Almost no one *wants* to read the content that
my team produces.• And absolutely no one wants to read a 2000
word conceptual overview when they’re in the middle of coding (much less a 100 page whitepaper!)
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Minimally viable content
• Historically, we tried to anticipate everything a dev might need, and produced it.
• That lead to bloat, since content was created speculatively; not based on articulated customer need.
• Ironically, right when we started to learn about how customers were actually using our products, we shifted attention to the next version, and began the speculative cycle all over again.
For Windows 8, we built minimally viable content for use on day 1, then paid closer attention to how customers actually used our content so we could flesh it out later.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
What is minimally viable content for the dev audience?• It covers all the basics:
– What the product is, and why you’d want it.– How to acquire it.– How to get started, quickly.– API reference, at baseline standards of quality.– Code samples for key APIs (not necessarily every API).– Breadth information about the features that comprise the
product or service.• What it’s not:
– A compendium of every imaginable scenario associated with the product.
– An exhaustive, inclusive reference section with deep details.
– Comprehensive guidance detailing every feature in the product or service. @Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
vNow vs. vNext
Adopting a “minimally viable” approach lets
your team support users on current
products/services better, while still
building a viable doc set for day 1
Keeping these forces in balance is critical to our content strategy – after all, it’s the current version of the platform or service that actually
pays the bills.
vNow
vNext
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Reimagining capacity planning
With Windows 8, we centralized content planning. We did this because…
– Not all features or scenarios are created equal.– Not all writers (or leads!) are as good at evaluating the
relative value of investing in one area against another.– Nearly all writers said “yes” when negotiating with their
feature teams (the “scribe” mentality).
By doing this, we started every milestone assuming that new content didn’t meet the bar for inclusion (“No!”). Then we let the writer or scenario owner talk the leadership team into it. @Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Deliberate collaboration
Data/BI
Content Engineering
Developer Evangelism & Support
Content
Experience
Content Team
Site ManagementProduct MarketingKey scenarios; campaigns; premium content; SEM
Scenario flows; content discoverability (SEO); metrics;project management;presentation; organization
Content goals, plans and scenarios; execution; IA
Product Team
Customer advocacy; user stories; competitive insights
Well defined roles helped us work together more effectively to create better content experiences across the customer’s journey.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Enabling customer contribution
Content teams at MS have been reluctant to embrace a more “open” content platform. But times are changing:
• Resourcing constraints are forcing our hand.• In the “real world”, software and content are
built side-by-side, in collaborative fashion (think GITHub).
• Devs know more about their code than writers.
In response, multiple initiatives incent customer participation in content:• Curah! curation platform.• Soon: Collaborative documentation and better 1st and 3rd party community
integration.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
PRINCIPLE: CODE FIRST (EMPATHY SECOND)
When a developer is stuck, they don’t want to read, they want code.
(Re)Building customer empathy
The leadership team recognized that the longer someone worked at Microsoft, the less customer empathy they exhibited. There are a number of reasons for that:
• Not enough hours in the day to continue to “dabble” with the technology.
• Passion gets extinguished – “it’s just a job”.• Loss of perspective due to assimilation into the
Microsoft culture.
We gave writers so much to do that the skills and attributes that made them such great hires in the first place slowly withered away! How could we rekindle their passion?
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Embracing code first…
Answer: write code. 25% of a writer’s total capacity was reserved so they would:
• Gain firsthand knowledge of the platform, from the developer’s perspective.
• Write more code snippets, which improved the underlying reference content.
• Spend more time in small development teams building end-to-end samples and solutions (real world development)
• Test our content – when they were coding and got stuck, the rule was they had to use our docs.@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Benefits of Code first
• A happier and more productive team. Writing code is fun!
• More complete and accurate documentation. Bugs were filed when we found omissions or errors.
• Deeper customer empathy. We developed unique insights of value to peer teams.
• Additional end-to-end and feature level samples. This raised our profile among the other engineering teams and executives.
• Better content. We knew firsthand what content devs needed to be successful, because we had walked a mile in their shoes.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Acknowledge when things are hard, and engage your customers in a more humane, straightforward, and empathetic way.
PRINCIPLE: MODERN VOICE AND TONE
Plain English instead of jargon from logic or math or whatever that is write it in plain English and tell me why the copy function does not work in this situation your language of explaining is very difficult to understand in plain english!!!! Plain English would be great speak plain English as we’re not all geeks. Try plain English and only give me the information I request. I need plain English with simple examples!!! Plain English please. Plain English so us non comp literates can understand. It was so over my head….geesh guys. Make it Plain English. Tell me in plain
“Plain English please!!!!”
I am a business analyst on an IT team, and I’m
offended by how unfriendly your help
is.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
The Tao of Microsoft Modern voice
“You’re trying to take something that can be described in many, many sentences and pages of prose, but you can convert it into a couple lines of poetry and you still get the essence.”
Satya Nadella
Microsoft CEO
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Voice principles
• Customer Intent. What are they really trying to do?• Focus on the intent. Make the most common task
ridiculously easy to find.• Easy to scan. Use formatting, art, headers, etc. to help
readers find what they are looking for.• Write concisely. Try to cut the length by half. • Word choice. Use everyday words. Use technical words
when they’re the right words. • Read aloud. Give it a natural, efficient voice. • Empathy. Acknowledge the reader’s situation.• SEO: Assume they’re coming from search.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
From this:Traditionally, many web developers have used browser detection in an attempt to provide a consistent experience between browsers. The typical implementation performs a single comparison operation, usually involving the user-agent string, and then makes several design assumptions about the features supported by that browser. In practice, however, feature detection has proven to be a more effective technique that requires less maintenance.
This article shows how to use feature detection to verify support for standards-based features and demonstrates different ways to detect features effectively. (83 words)
To this:Many web developers use browser detection to determine what’s supported in a given browser. However, feature detection has proven to be more effective and requires less maintenance. Let’s look at this in more detail, including how to detect features effectively. (40 words)
Voice example
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Destroy. All. Robot. Language.
modify changeperform doattempt try
terminate endnavigate go
image picturetoggle switchobtain get
configure set upexecute runresolve fixenable allow
halt stopvalue number
before|after
Use simple words
Copyright © 2014 Microsoft Corporation. Do not reproduce without permission. @Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Before/After
Sidebar: Who knew that Steve Ballmer actually aspired to technical communications?
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
PRINCIPLE: BE DATA DRIVENThere’s only so much quality content we can produce. Produce the right resources; not everything you can think of.
API Documentation at Microsoft
API (Application Programming Interface) reference documentation represents 80+% of the content produced and maintained by my team. Why?• Corporate and regulatory regimes designed to enable
interoperability.• 30 years of Windows, and a commitment to backwards
compatibility.• Ubiquitous market position that compels us to make our
products and services as flexible as possible.
While 80+% of our content is reference, every API isn’t created equal…
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
The long tail…
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64 67 70 73 76 79 82 85 88 91 94 97 100
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Percentage of views
For Microsoft developer content projects, the top 1% of topics account for 50% of all page views, while the top 10% account for 90+%. The “long tail” starts after that. 90% of our content is hardly ever viewed!
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
The new approach
With Windows 8 RTM, we documented all APIs to a minimally acceptable level of completeness. • We then took the calculated risk to wait, to
determine which APIs were actually being used.• To avoid small sample size, we reviewed data in
monthly intervals.• By month two we had sufficient data to
determine which APIs were being used most.
Keeping a close eye on the data allowed us to say “no” to unnecessary work.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
Keeping an eye on the competition
Knowing where you stand relative to competitors is a powerful tool.• We reviewed key competitor sites and experiences
in quarterly increments.• Small teams scored each site across 30 dimensions.• Ratings were inherently subjective, but normalized
at in-person discussions.• We then reviewed our own site.
Key findings were cataloged, and shared with partners. When executives or others asked “How does Apple do that?” we had the answer.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
CONCLUSION
Key learnings
• Don’t be a team of scribes. Be a team of SMEs.• Keep innovation and fundamentals in balance.• Remember that almost no one *wants* to consume technical content.• Embrace minimally viable principles, then gather data and improve.• Intentionally balance your investment between vNow and vNext.• Hold a high bar for new work.• Collaborate with related disciplines intentionally.• Embrace outside help and curate where possible.• Empathy drives SAT and helps your team anticipate customer needs.• A great code sample is worth more than 1,000 words.• Be concise, and write in plain English.• Use data to invest in the right content, not everything you can think
of.• Knowing your competition gives you power – use it.
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
QUESTIONS?
Connect with me!
• LinkedIn• Email• MSDN Magazine• Twitter (@Keith_Boyd)• LavaCon 2012 slides (New voice, new tone, new
IA: Writing for the modern developer)• May 2014 issue of Intercom• Curah!
@Keith_Boyd #LavaCon
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