Identifying and evaluating existing documentation assets is the first step. You can use tools like document management systems, content audits, or metadata analysis to help you determine what you have, where it is, who owns it, and how useful it is. Additionally, you should consider several criteria, such as relevance to the current state and functionality of the software, accuracy of the documentation, completeness of the documentation in covering all features and scenarios of the software, accessibility for the intended audience, and maintainability by the documentation team.
While assessing the document before discarding or archiving it, the historical context of the document should be understood. Why it was created, is it serving some specific purpose or addressing any specific challenge? After analyzing them, consider the tacit knowledge embedded within the documentation. Even if the information seems outdated, it may still contain valuable insights or lessons learned that could be beneficial for future projects or reference.
The next step is to decide what you want to achieve with your documentation migration and how you will do it. Align your goals with the needs and expectations of stakeholders, such as developers, users, or clients. Furthermore, consider the costs, benefits, and risks of different migration options. You may want to consolidate documentation sources, formats, or systems into a single or fewer ones using tools like content conversion, import, or export. Additionally, you could modernize the quality, usability, or compatibility of your documentation with new tools, platforms, or standards by utilizing content editing, formatting, or validation. Lastly, if you wish to change the structure, style, or format of your documentation to suit a different purpose, audience, or medium you can use tools like content restructuring, rewriting, or adaptation.
Seamless transition of legacy documents to a new system or format, ensuring improved accessibility, usability, and maintainability. Defining the objective is important prior to setting the migration goals and strategy.
I suggest this is the first and most important step — no, phase — because it can be the most resource-intensive: • It takes time to convince management and other influential stakeholders that the change from X to Y at this time is worth the expense and disruption from old to new • It takes a financial commitment to budget and spend money for buying or leasing products • It often involves working with outside consultants to assist • It takes training staff (and/or hiring new staff), often with subject-matter experts who provide rough drafts or who review material written be others being resistant to change, often quite vocally. • It means continuing meeting documentation needs while the “documentation transformation” is occurring
The third step in the process is to select the appropriate tools and methods for your documentation migration. It's important to consider the availability, functionality, and compatibility of different tools and methods for your specific documentation type, format, or system. Additionally, testing and evaluating the performance, quality, and reliability of the tools and methods is essential before using them for your migration. Common tools and methods include manual, automated, and hybrid. Manual can be useful for small-scale, complex, or sensitive documentation that requires high accuracy or customization; however it can also be time-consuming, error-prone, or inconsistent. Automated can be useful for large-scale, simple, or standardized documentation that requires high speed or efficiency; however it can also be limited, inaccurate, or incompatible. Hybrid can be useful for medium-scale, mixed, or varied documentation that requires a balance of accuracy and efficiency; however it can also be complex, costly, or challenging.
This is part of the section described as Step 2 above, which can be a complex, expensive, disruptive, and lengthy process. These two “steps” should be significantly expanded upon. Change like this requires a lot of motivation and commitment. One of the most important issues that must be addressed before launching this process or any of the steps described in this article should be, “What happens if we don’t make this transition?” Are there regulatory consequences, data archival and retrieval consequences, sales and customer satisfaction consequences, integrating documentation with product functionality consequences, etc.
The final step is to implement your migration plan and track the outcomes. To ensure success, you should create a clear and detailed migration plan that outlines the scope, schedule, resources, roles, and responsibilities of your project. Additionally, communication and collaboration with stakeholders, team members, and other parties involved in the project is essential. To measure the results of your migration, you should use metrics such as quality (i.e., relevance, accuracy, completeness, accessibility, and maintainability), effectiveness (i.e., purpose, audience, and medium of the documentation) and efficiency (i.e., time, money, and effort of the migration project).
The last but not least step is to review and improve your migrated documentation. You should solicit and incorporate feedback from your stakeholders, users, and peers on your migrated documentation. You should also identify and resolve any issues, errors, or gaps in your migrated documentation. You should also update and maintain your migrated documentation regularly to keep it relevant, accurate, complete, accessible, and maintainable.
While reviewing the migrated document, ensure that all hyperlinks, cross-references, and citations within the documentation are still functional. Broken links or outdated references can diminish the usability and credibility of the documentation. Regularly validate and update links to ensure users can access relevant resources seamlessly.
Choose Senior Technical Writers and Publication Designers with many years experience working for multiple industries and companies. By working in multiple industries and companies, these writers acquire an expanded view and can see the way software and hardware crossover, as well as the possibilities for them to do more so. The wide experience allows Senior Writers to visualize documentation needs beyond what the client thinks they need. For example, iRobot’s Seaglider training manuals needed a large Messages and Codes section for the pilot operators to access when coding the Seaglider. IRobot had never worked with computer programming and APIs to the extent they needed.