Document Development Life Cycle

Technical Documentation is not just a process of writing. Before the actual content creation starts there are many phases a writer has to pass through.

Just as Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), technical writing field also has Document Development Life Cycle (DDLC). There are no unique set of stages in a DDLC. Every organization follows a personalized approach for executing their documentation projects. In general, the following list covers most common stages of information development. 

 Documentation Development Life Cycle Phases



Note: This is one of the most common blog posts amongst technical writers. You will get many variants of the same life cycle. I have created this cycle as per my understanding and experience.

Kick-Off: The customer may have an idea about what documents are required for the project even before the software development has started. Alternatively, the customer might not have any idea whether the project needs documentation or not. In either cases, you as a technical documentation expert should have an idea about the scope of the documentation.

Information & Audience Analysis: During this phase, you must gather the useful information of the project and understand all the user documentation requests. It requires a lot interview sessions and surveys to gauge the exact requirements of the project. It is also necessary to understand the readers of your documents. This process is called audience analysis.

Planning & Estimation: After gathering all the necessary information, you can estimate the amount of time and resources required for completing the project during this phase. Based on the estimation, you can devise a feasible plan of execution.

Content Creation: In this stage, you create the content as per the design. But, content creation is not only about writing. It involves other necessary things such as adding relevant illustrations, images, and cross-references.

Review & Testing: Review is one of the most important phases of DDLC. In this phase, your peer (another technical writer or subject matter expert-SME) reviews the content. Generally, it is advisable to follow a “Writer-Developer-SME” approach in review, i.e. first review by writer, second review by developer and the last review by the SME.

Publishing: Once a document is thoroughly reviewed, it can be sent for publication. The same document can be used for various output formats, for example, print (PDF) and online (web help). So, during this phase, you may use as many publication options as per your distribution requirements.

Feedback & Maintenance: This final stage of DDLC ensures that there is a follow up on the documents that are delivered. A proper feedback should also be taken and in case of any discrepancies, you should make sure that the errors are solved and never repeated again.

P.S. In the next few days, I will cover each of these stages as individual topics in detail.