Creating clear and concise content

A key feature of this stage is the use of single sourcing techniques to reduce costs and to promote consistency.

The big advantage to this approach is vastly reduced maintenance costs. If you have many products, or they get updated regularly, you'll know how expensive and time-consuming it can be keeping the information accurate and updated. With single sourcing, you update the source files once and once only. Next time you recreate the outputs, this change is reflected in all deliverables instantly.

Other advantages to this approach are it's faster, it's more accurate and it promotes consistency.

The review process:

All our work is created in accordance with the following quality characteristics:

• Task orientation - A focus on helping people do tasks, not describing how the product works
• Accuracy - No errors of fact
• Completeness - The inclusion of all necessary parts, and only those tasks
• Clarity - Information presented in a way that readers understand it first time
• Style - Use of an appropriate and targeted writing style
• Organization - Coherent arrangement of parts that make sense
• Retrievability - Presentation of information in a way that makes it easy to find
• Visual effectiveness - Use of layout, illustrations, colour, typography and icons
• Consistency - Use the same elements or content (terminology) where appropriate

After you have reviewed and approved the new content, it's time to deliver it.