The DDLC

Most of the documentation teams in different companies follow their own DDLC as per their convenience. However, if you compare all the DDLC variations, you can easily see a common pattern, structure and process among all of them. DDLC in expansion is known Document Development Life Cycle. Most of the product based companies try to match every step of DDLC with the corresponding SDLC (software development life cycle) steps. This matching is necessary to release the product support documentation along with the release of the product itself in the market. This article tries to explain all the major steps of DDLC so that the reader will gain a good understanding once this article is read.

The most important basic steps in DDLC are

1. Requirement gathering

2. Audience analysis

3. Validation of template

4. Subject matter writing

5. Reviews

6. Correction incorporations

7. Final Release

8. Maintenance

The preceding 8 steps form the backbone of DDLC (any variant). Usually, the guide writing starts from Requirement Gathering stage (first step). All the specs written by Business Analysts have to be thoroughly read and have to be understood by the Technical Writers. During this stage, the writers participate in different product related discussions, debates, walkthroughs, etc, so that they can gain an understanding about the to-be-created-product.

In the second step, the writers have to determine who is their target audience i.e., for whom they are going to write all these guides. This is a very important step in Guide writing. Depending on the target audience, the way a guide has to be written differs. For example, all the product installation guides target Administrators as their target audience. If the product installation requires that its Administrators need to have technical knowledge, then the guides have to be written in such a way keeping the technical administrators in mind i.e., the guide will use technical terminology.

In the third step, here, a template will be created using the editor, which you want to use to write the guide. Since every company has their own documentation standards to be followed, this template should also adhere to those standards. Above all, the Documentation Head has to approve the template before you start writing the guide.

In the fourth step, you need to write about what you have studied and gathered about the product in the guide format using the approved template. Here again, depending on which type of guide you want to write, the information structure has to be changed. For example, a task-based guide does not look similar to a reference guide. Both guides have their own way of information structuring. If you want to write a guide, which can serve as an online guide also, then go for screen based guide format. This kind of writing force you to write the matter in a modular way and this in turn helps you to quickly create an online guide using the same matter along with the information structure.

In the fifth step, you need t deal with different kinds of reviews. Initially, after you write the first draft, your guide will be pushed to the following reviews: self-review, peer review, technical review, editorial review. Depending on the requirement, a few companies also try to get the guide reviewed by the Marketing department, Design team, etc. These are additional reviews depending upon the need.

In the sixth step, you need to do a hell lot of corrections during the guide review period. Out of all the reviews mentioned above, Technical review by the subject matter expert (SME) is the utmost important one; the second one is the editorial review. Most companies that want to cut the review periods of the guide cut the remaining reviews except the Technical and Editorial reviews. Most of the times technical writers work parallelly on different projects, which are in different stages. For example, if a few projects are in review stage, some other in initial stage, like that. Since every guide is different and deals matter of its own, you need to be careful while working on the guides.

In the seventh step, the guide has to be released long with the new product in the market. If your product deals with a printed guide, then make sure that the printing work has to be done in advance. Nowadays, most of the companies are allowing the guide to download. This option saves lot of money and time. Moreover, a few others are opting for Wiki-based guides so that the user always can avail latest and updated information about the product and its processes.

The last and final step in guide writing deals with the Guide Maintenance part; once the product is released in the market, depending on the customer's requirements the company needs to add new features/ changes /enhancements to the product. When there are changes in the product, then the guides need to be updated automatically.

This process continues as long as the product is there in the market.

In summary, this article explains in brief about the DDLC and its various steps for the readers' understanding.