The Content Pipeline: A Content Ops Maturity Model for Tech Doc Teams

We have been discussing how we can improve how we manage our platform's technical documentation. This documentation is essential to successfully helping our customers use our platform and solutions, so we want to do it right.  

We decided to apply the Content Operations Maturity Model (COMM), a structured way to assess our current documentation capabilities and identify steps to improve efficiency, consistency, and scalability. Most people might recognize this model applied to content marketing (if you are in marketing), but there's as much opportunity to use it for technical documentation.  

Let's look at this model and how you (and we) can apply it to our business.  

The COMM for tech docs looks something like this:  

1. Ad hoc (Level 1) – Minimal processes, siloed documentation efforts, and lack of governance.  

2. Developing (Level 2) – Emerging documentation standards, basic content reuse, and limited collaboration.  

3. Standardized (Level 3) – Established workflows, structured content, and defined content governance.  

4. Optimized (Level 4) – Advanced automation, extensive content reuse, and integrated review processes.  

5. Transformative (Level 5) – Fully agile, AI-enhanced documentation, continuous content optimization, and enterprise-wide content orchestration.  

Assess the Current State  

The first thing you need to do is assess where you currently sit in the model. To do that, you have to assess the current state of your technical documentation team and its processes.  

Here are some questions you can ask your team:  

• Are you following a structured content model? Do you have that model defined so everyone understands how to lay out the structure for new documentation?  

• Are you reusing content across documentation assets? How much reuse do you have today? Do you see other opportunities for reuse that you could apply?  

• Do you have a clearly defined taxonomy and metadata? Does your team apply it consistently?  

• How are you managing digital assets, including images, screenshots, and other commonly used assets in your documentation?  

• What does your team structure look like? How do you involve subject matter experts (including the product development team) in your team?  

• What does your workflow process look like for new documentation? For managing updates to existing documentation?  

• How are you dealing with creating new versions of your documentation for upcoming releases?  

• Is the work your team does integrated with product development cycles?  

• Have you incorporated any AI-driven capabilities into your processes? Do you see areas where AI and automation can improve your processes and the team's productivity?  

There are other important questions you can include in this assessment. Create a spreadsheet and put each question in a row. Spend some time talking to your team individually to see if their responses are the same. You might find there are areas you need to improve from these discussions.  

You should also perform an audit of your existing documentation to see if it aligns with the assessment you did. Note areas that need work.  

Take all this information and map the results against the maturity model above. If you are like many organizations, you likely sit somewhere between Level 1 (Ad hoc) and Level 2 (Developing), which means there is plenty of room for improvement.  

Strategies for Improvement  

Moving up the maturity curve requires a combination of process improvements, technology investments, and cultural shifts.  

To start, look at content and map out a structured content model that makes sense. Identify areas for reuse, but also keep in mind that you don't need to reuse every piece of content. Your motto should be "reuse where it makes sense."    

To manage structured content well, you should implement a component content management system (CCMS) - like Discover CX (have to get that pitch in there!). A CCMS enables you to map out the structure of your documentation and manage it better. Could you do this in Google or Word? Not easily.  

One of the benefits of structured content is that you can have multiple writers working on the same documentation at the same time (just different parts). To manage this properly, you need to define a workflow process that assigns writers to sections and automates the review and approval of that content. The workflow can also include sending the content for translation and potentially publishing it live.  

Spend some time working through the workflow process, identifying the different roles in the process and what responsibilities they have with your documentation. Subject matter experts, product owners, and even developers typically have some role to play in the content creation and review process. So do compliance and quality assurance people, especially if there are strict regulations related to how your documentation is written and published.  

Make a Plan to Move to a New Level  

You won't move from a Level 1 to a Level 3 or 4 overnight. It takes time to put the right processes in place and to train your team accordingly. You will need to consider what the most important goals are to start with and define a roadmap that gets you working towards them.  

For example, while content reuse might make a lot of sense, your first priority is to get your team skilled in structured content authoring. The shift can be challenging if they are used to working with Word documents. Once they are trained, start building your documentation following a structured content model, then start thinking about reuse.  

You'll also have to think about how you will migrate existing documentation into a structured content model. Will you migrate it all? Do you need to? Maybe you start new documentation using the new approach and only migrate existing documentation as it needs updating. Or you could have a separate team responsible for migrating existing content while your core team works on new content. Maybe you don't migrate anything and start fresh with new versions of your content. There are costs associated with all these different approaches, so take the time to decide carefully.  

Also, we know that AI is sitting in Level 5, but that doesn't mean you should ignore it entirely until you have everything else in place. Test using generative AI capabilities to help write content or edit content for proper structure. Set up a sandbox or POC and let your team play with it to get a feel for how they could use it. Then, when you are ready to move to that higher, more mature level, you already have some idea of what you want to do.  

We can talk about so much more here, but this is a good start.  

We're curious. Where does your team stand on the maturity scale?  

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Too Many Open Tabs

Filtering through all the information out there is kind of fun. Here’s what caught our attention lately:

1. Measuring the value of technical content by Michael Iantosca
2. AI Readiness Guide from Content Rules
3. Why Technical Writing Needs Its Next DOCX Moment by Shay Adler:

Have a great article you think we should share? Let us know, and we'll open a new tab.

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