Our experience in developing documentation or training material has led us to developing for clients in the USA, Mauritius, UK and locally in South Africa.
So! How do we work together to create online help or learning programs?
To develop on-line documentation or training material that complies with your requirements, we follow a controlled and well managed development process. Afour Technical Communications manages the process right from the first contact point, in four phases:
In Phase One, which is the initial contact phase, you contact us – we meet and discuss your requirements.
In Phase Two, we do all the legal stuff – Proposal creation and submission, NDAs, Copyright cessions, then we conclude an agreement.
Phase Three, is the Design Phase. Here we gather all the necessary information and stuff from you and put it in a prototype.
Phase Four, is the Production, Review and Implementation Phase. This is the fun part, we build it, show it to you, you check it out for accuracy and correctness. If necessary, we change it, mould it, fix it . . . and we go round and round till it's done. Within in limits, of course.
Phase One – Initiation Phase
Generally, we receive a phone call or email from you requesting more information about our services. You tell us what you require and ask if we can help. We tell you that we think we can and ask to meet or teleconference with you to give us more insight into your requirement. We provide you with a Phase 1 Questionnaire to peruse until we meet. We meet and we discuss the questionnaire and any other items on the agenda.
Next, we need to see the real thing to assess time and costs. If necessary, we sign an NDA to protect your intellectual capital.
Phase Two – Planning and Legal Phase
Obviously, you want to protect your intellectual capital, so first, we conclude the Non-Disclosure agreement.
We now have access to your systems and information, which we use to develop our proposal which will contain our assumptions, our development tasks, milestones, copyright cession and last but not least, our charges. Please note that it is firstly preferable for us to have remote access to your product or a full installation on a notebook computer. Obviously, this is greatly dependent on the architecture of the product. Sometimes, the use of a VPN environment is preferred.
Preliminary information-gathering is done by Afour. Sources may include system and other technical or functional specifications, interviews with subject matter experts, and/or using the product to see what it does and how it works. Concurrently, a project plan and schedule will be worked out in consultation with the client.
Please note: All information gathering interviews and meetings will be recorded. This ensures that all information is captured and hopefully, nothing is missed.
We submit the proposal, which will outline the scope and tasks, to you for perusal and, hopefully, acceptance. Upon acceptance of the proposal, we will conclude the development agreement by signing the proposal.
At this stage a deposit payment is required. Please read our Terms and Conditions.
Phase Three - The Design Phase
We start by requesting you to do a homework assignment (Phase 3 Questionnaire), which is used to define the project's detailed objectives, such as design element requirements and expectations, business process examples, project size, flow charts, features and benefits, description of topic functionality, specific jargon and branding theme and logos.
When you have completed the assignment and you must prepare to attend a project kick-off meeting either physically or by teleconference. At this meeting, we will define the business issues around the project, the objectives, and the structure. This is probably the most important part of the project, specifying your direction and objective and how you want to achieve it. That is why we need to do this part together.
After a successful kick-off meeting, if required, our technical writer or instructional designer will meet with the subject matter expert (SME), to compile a more detailed script and plan visuals and interactions that meet with your objectives. This process helps design the storyboard or topic structure used to build your materials in Phase Four.
At the end of Phase Three, we combine the design work (subject content, images, animations and videos) and the standards (theme look & feel) and the topic structure or storyboard into a short prototype. The prototype gives you an accurate sample view of how your project material will look after it has been built.
At this point, you will approve the prototype and then production can begin.
Phase Four - The Production, Review & Delivery Phase
At this stage the prototype is complete and the developers get involved. From the prototype and all gathered information, the developers will see what is required and what needs to be developed. Creative processes are often time consuming and expensive. So much effort will go into the design, in order to ensure that there is no room for guesswork or rework.
The project will then go through several stages of review. Each stage will involve:
- Writing a first draft for review. The draft may contain questions or comments about alternative approaches for the reviewers.
- Commenting / reviewing the first draft. At this stage, the SME or other experts will usually be asked to correct any errors or answer any query, and business process experts will be asked to comment on the general approach.
- Writing the second draft for review, incorporating comments and, if necessary, reconciling conflicting opinions.
- Client will review the draft again. At this stage, comments should be relatively minor. This will continue through a reiterative process until complete.
- If a software product is still under development, it is of utmost importance to keep us informed timeously of all changes being made.
At the end of this phase the final product will be deployed to a CD, server or website environment.
Managing Your Project Online
When you contract with us to work on a long-term documentation project, you may want to be kept abreast of our progress. We provide a means by which you can accomplish this and, if you wish, to collaborate online with us about your project.
You will receive an e-mail each time we modify something in your project with respect to tasks & status, milestones & status, and new documents.
To Access Your Project
First, you will identify company individuals—managers, developers, administrators—who should receive notifications and participate online in the management of your project. We set up user accounts and profiles for them and send them notices, or invitations, to join the project.
All you need to do is click the Client Project Login option in the Project Management menu to access the portal.
You are requested for your Username and Password.
To view a demo of the project management tool we use, log in and see how we use it to help you manage our work.
Please use these credentials:
USERNAME: demouser
PASSWORD: demo
Note: There is no training to use the portal. Your tasks are presented to you directly when you are logged in, so you will see all the necessary information immediately. You do not need to update or edit any data, the portal is merely available for you to monitor progress.
