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Document Development Life Cycle

The document development life cycle (DDLC) outlines the stages involved in structured document creation from start to finish. It includes project start-up and requirement analysis, outlining the document, preparing prototypes and developing the content. The final stages are testing the document, packaging it for delivery, and maintaining the document over time through revisions or updates.

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892 views2 pages

Document Development Life Cycle

The document development life cycle (DDLC) outlines the stages involved in structured document creation from start to finish. It includes project start-up and requirement analysis, outlining the document, preparing prototypes and developing the content. The final stages are testing the document, packaging it for delivery, and maintaining the document over time through revisions or updates.

Uploaded by

kronos047
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Document Development Life Cycle

Document development life cycle (DDLC) includes the various stages involved in structured document creation. It ranges from requirement analysis through maintenance of the completed document. The DDLC comprises of the following stages:
Project Start-up Maintaining Requirement Analysis

Packaging

Outlining the Document

Testing Developing

Preparing Prototype

Project Start-up
Project start-up generally involves the creation of project plan. It includes understanding the project objectives and constraints in terms of time, quality, and cost. The scope of the project is clearly defined along with standards to be followed throughout the project. This phase also involves identifying key personnel responsible for providing, reviewing, and approving document content.

Requirement Analysis
Requirement analysis for documentation includes Audience Analysis, tools that will be used in the project. You try to understand the learning gap and come up with strategies required in achieving the project goal. You also decide the format and the delivery media for the document at this phase.

Outlining the Document


Outlining means creating an overall plan of the document, which is also known as the skeleton framework of the document. This framework comprises of preface or introduction, table of contents,

chapter information/sequence, index, glossary etc. A technical writer only needs to explain all the elements, once the plan is ready.

Preparing Prototype
Preparing a prototype comprises of template consideration, developing a style guides, creating a sample section of the document. A template depicts the physical appearance of the document. While designing the template, you need to consider all the specifications, styles, and standards required for the document. This includes page size, page margins, header/footer, heading styles, font type, font size, and figure/table representations etc. A style guide is a set of standards to be followed to design and write documents. This guide contains information regarding the various styles defined for the document template. It consists of definitions of various styles that are to be used in the document.

Developing
Developing the document requires actual writing of the document, and integration of the various components (graphics, glossary, search items) of the document. This phase also involves document reviews and revisions and management of documentation issues. Now, the document is ready for testing.

Testing
Testing involves measuring the quality of the document. This involves review by quality analysts on parameters like correctness, completeness, adherence to standards, and usability.

Packaging
Packaging means making a document ready to deliver to the client. There are two types of packaging: book design and binding; and integrating help in application. If the help manual is in book format that is supposed to go along with the product, it goes for printing to produce copies. Online help is integrated with the help of software developers in the respective application. Online help is always delivered with the help of CD or other devices that can be used to carry the data. There are different types of such deliveries to help the clients, depending on the product.

Maintaining
Maintenance involves maintaining the deliverables. For example, it may involve content reuse analysis and elimination of redundant data from the document sets. It may also include template revision or inclusion of new product features. Understanding the DDLC helps in efficient and quality document creation.

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