Let me just cut to the chase. I hate metrics. Or hated, I should say, but now I think I may be starting to appreciate them. Most of my career has been built around the written word, not numbers. So, there was a learning curve, even knowing Excel as well as I do!
My first foray into the world of metrics came when I started as a freelancer. I wanted to plan out my month and see how much work I needed to maintain my income. As long as I had an anchor client, and a few additional clients each month, I was reaching month’s end in the clear. This is when I learned that “what gets measured, gets managed.”
This is true not only to adjust work but also to figure out, once the documentation is written, how it’s being used and how it can be improved.
Metrics provide the basis for continuous improvement.
The areas to be measured include:
- User Feedback (comments, ratings)
- Productivity (documents, pages within defined timeframe)
- User Engagement (page views, time on page)
- Searches Topics (keywords, sentences used)
- Usability (measure task completion)
- Improvement Tracking (monitoring, document usage and trend reports)
Technical writers are constantly getting feedback on documentation through users, peers, and subject matter experts. Users rate and comment, and if using a content management system like Flare or RoboHelp, they can provide feedback in the application. Measurements that can be used to identify user engagement are search phrases, topics viewed, and demographic statistics such as browsers and operating system utilized.
Measuring the documentation itself is another metric.
With documentation, the time between the initial draft and publication can show the level of productivity. Writers identify how long it takes to produce a document and determine from this any inefficiencies and places where the process can be streamlined. Another metric to track is the number of documents or page count that can produced within a certain timeframe.
Improvement tracking includes monitoring, which ensures that documentation remains accurate, up-to-date and effective. Additionally, obtaining information on how often the documentation is used can provide insight into how well the processes are written. Again, with specific software systems (Madcap Flare) or platforms (ServiceNow) trend reports for detailed searches, click-through, and most viewed procedures can be reviewed. By analyzing trends over time, technical writer can identify long-term improvements and recurring issues, make data-driven decisions to enhance their documentation and enable continuous improvement in quality, efficiency, and user satisfaction.
Hyper Writer 