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AI Summary
- Arjan Ros, Product Director at Reynen Court LLC, discussed improving software documentation on Knowledgebase Ninjas.
- He entered documentation after being asked to find a platform for Reynen Court’s documentation, discovering and implementing Document360.
- Arjan collaborates with technical engineering, technical architects, and product management; Reynen Court is not currently generating organic search traffic through its knowledgebase but is exploring it.
- He recommends an “out of the box” documentation solution so engineers can focus on the product. Users should access only documentation relevant to their products, improving customer experience.
- Arjan highlights “information mapping”—information chunking, labelling, and consistency—and advises letting product experts document freely before restructuring and editing for readers.
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See Document360 in action
Arjan Ros, Product Director at Reynen Court LLC joins us in this episode of Knowledgebase Ninjas to discuss how they are improving their software documentation.
Connect with Arjan and Reynen Court LLC here:
Key Takeaways:
How Arjan got into documentation
Arjan’s move into the world of documentation was by accident! He was asked internally to find a new platform to house all the documentation that Reynen court produces. He actually found and implemented Document360 and this lead him down the rabbit hole into the world of documentation.
Who Arjan collaborates with to produce great documentation
Arjan is not a writer himself, he collaborates with technical engineering, technical architects and product management in order to produce high quality documentation.
Organic search traffic through documentation
Arjan and Reynen Court are not currently generating any organic search traffic through their knowledgebase but are looking into this going forward.
Arjan recommends using documentation technology
Instead of using your engineers to build you own software documentation solution, Arjan recommends that you find an “out of the box” solution to enable your product ream to focus on your product, and not on your documentation.
A simple hack that you need to incorporate into your software documentation strategy
Arjan only gives his users access to documentation related to the products they are using (Document360 enables this). This improves customer experience as they are not daunted by a large amount of documentation that is not relevant to them.
The single training course that had the biggest impact on Arjan’s documentation career
Arjan didn’t share the name of the course but the most important concept it taught was that of “information mapping”, this covered information chunking, labelling and consistency. If you are interested, you can Google “information mapping”.
“Never straightjacket the expert”
Arjan suggests that if you are working with and managing product expert – don’t tell them how to write. Simply allow them to flourish and do not put them into a straight jacket as this will kill their imagination.
Instead, he recommends allowing them to fully document everything that they need to, and then go in yourself to restructure and edit for the reader.
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