Document Development Life Cycle - DDLC

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DDLC - Document Development Life Cycle is the process of steps involved in document creation. When Technical Writers wants to create a document, there are few specific steps involved. Those steps altogether called DDLC. 

  1. Requirement analysis 

  2. Understand Audience 

  3. Decide type of the document 

  4. Decide Style guides to use in entire documents 

  5. Develop the Content 

  6. Review the Document 

  7. Publish the Document 

  8. Maintain the Document 

DDLC



  Requirement analysis -  Analyze the requirements of the document to prepare. Have a session with SME (Subject Matter Expert). From SMEs gather information such as
  • What is about the application
  • How many modules in the application
  • Who are the end users of the application
  • System requirements of the application
Understand Audience : 
Technical Writers should understand the who are the end users. If end users are non IT, Tech writers should use easy language.  If end users are software users, Tech writers should use technical language.

Decide type of the document:
What kind of end document should be delivered will be decided in this step. It will be either online document or HTML help file or offline pdf document or word document.

Decide Style guides to use in entire documents 
Decide the style guides. 
  • Which font to be used for headings, sub headings
  • Which font is used for the content
  • How to use the bulleted list (bullets, any specific image etc)
  • Font to use for index, glossary and Appendix

Develop the Content 

Once interviews are done with SME, collect the required information and document in company specific format. 
wherever required use the images.


 Review the Document
Review the document by your self and conduct peer review also and get the feedback and if required apply the changes specified in feedback.
Some companies have specific QA for that, reach out to them and get the feedback.

Publish the Document 
Publish the document in required format - pdf, doc, ppt, html according to the end user feasability.

Maintain the Document
Maintain the document and update when application got the changes and update the versions.

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