Studying Time: 6 minutes
Greatest-in-class product documentation is the hallmark of most customer-centric organizations. Product documentation helps customers navigate by way of your product and uncover essentially the most related options and capabilities. Excessive-quality product documentation differentiates your online business from the competitors and helps you win belief. In rising firms, documentation is a further assist helpline that may scale rapidly and cut back assist prices.
If you wish to be actually customer-obsessed, ask your self:
- What sort of documentation does your product have? Is it clear, concise, and unambiguous?
- Does your product have well-written documentation? Is it correct and full?
- Is your documentation simply accessible to clients?
- Does it comply with a logical construction, and is it straightforward to grasp?
- Are superior matters coated within the documentation?
- Is your documentation up-to-date?
- How nicely does your documentation assist your clients obtain their objectives with out hassles?
In case your solutions to a few of these questions are “perhaps” or “no,” you might host a Docathon inside your group and repair a few of these gaps within the product documentation.
We found 1400 points throughout our latest Docathon at MoEngage. An intense 48-hour war-like evaluation included over 100 members throughout three time zones. Out of 2183 bugs reported, 1427 had been related. And the most effective half, the occasion was distant.
Would you want to seek out out extra about our Docathon? This text discusses all the things you’ll must know earlier than organizing a Docathon.
The Want For Docathon
You’ll agree that efficient product documentation is important. Nevertheless, regardless of its significance, we don’t at all times allocate sufficient time and a focus to documentation. Bettering documentation is an ongoing course of and could be draining when you’ve got restricted assets. The secret is to appreciate that good documentation isn’t the duty of 1 workforce – documentation is everybody’s enterprise.
This received us considering,
- What if everybody within the group contributed to documentation?
- May we set a couple of days apart to enhance our product documentation?
In our case, we realized there might be a number of gaps in our documentation – some identified and others unknown. Nevertheless, we lacked the mandatory perspective, bandwidth, and coordination to establish, prioritize, and fill them. To carry a couple of companywide coordinated effort to enhance documentation, we hosted a Docathon (a marathon to enhance documentation).
What’s A Docathon?
A Docathon is a hackathon for product documentation. A Docathon is a collaborative occasion aiming to uncover documentation gaps inside a brief interval. Merely put, Docathon is a bug bash for documentation. Bug bashes have been extremely profitable at MoEnagage, and our testing workforce hosts them repeatedly. Moreover, we’ve got expertise in organizing growth hackathons efficiently. Even with this prior expertise, we knew a Docathon could be difficult.
Figuring out gaps within the documentation doesn’t require particular abilities. In contrast to bug bashes and growth hackathons, anybody can take part within the Docathon.
How To Put together For A Docathon
Organizing a hackathon could seem intimidating at first. Nevertheless, for those who plan forward, it’s not tough to schedule one.
Resolve the date and time
To arrange your bug bash, you should choose a date first. You may assume it’s trivial, however selecting the unsuitable time and date generally is a deal-breaker. Choose a date when it’s prone to have the best participation. Manage an inclusive occasion that allows colleagues from totally different geographies to take part remotely or in individual. Earlier than scheduling the occasion, take into account cultural sensitivities and celebrations.
Type an organizing workforce
Organizing an occasion like Docathon is a mammoth job for a single individual. One individual can’t personal all the things with so many transferring elements. So we shaped a various organizing workforce consisting of individuals from varied departments. The Docathon organizing workforce had members from Documentation, Product, Engineering, Buyer Success, and Gross sales. Every organizing workforce member was assigned clear duties and roles all through the occasion. Whenever you assemble a various workforce of people, you get balanced viewpoints and decrease the danger of unconscious bias in decision-making. For us, the Docathon was a superb instance of how individuals with totally different views can collaborate and obtain wonderful issues.
Create buzz inside the group
Pre-event advertising is important to get participation. You need to not solely make individuals conscious of your occasion, however it’s essential to additionally create pleasure amongst your attendees about what’s to return. A teaser marketing campaign could be an efficient technique to construct buzz. Keep your viewers’s curiosity with snippets of content material over time. Talk successfully on the proper time and thru the suitable channels. Folks get quite a few emails, slack notifications, and assembly invites. Your communications should stand out to get their consideration.
Invite groups to take part
We launched a type for registering groups two weeks earlier than the occasion to gather Members’ names, electronic mail addresses, and workforce names.
We felt {that a} workforce of 2-4 members works the most effective. We additionally despatched registration reminders periodically and set a deadline to create a way of urgency. Encourage your leaders and documentation champions to take part within the occasion. Participation by leaders will mechanically result in involvement by their groups.
Arrange a mission tracker
Create a JIRA mission to seize bugs and enhancements.
- Have customized fields to seize web page names, Bug classes, URL of the web page, or some other data {that a} bug report ought to include. Seize important data utilizing obligatory fields.
- Share the templates for bug reporting.
- Create a few bugs in every bug class to assist members perceive draft an excellent bug report for the Docathon.
- Share an inventory of instruments and display recorders that the members can use to seize bugs.
Outline and talk the foundations
There are particular guidelines in each competitors; a Docathon isn’t any expectation. You might discover some concepts by our rule sheet.
Conduct a prep assembly
Schedule a gathering a few days earlier than the occasion. Within the preparation assembly, stroll the members by way of the scope of the Docathon, guidelines, bug reporting, and so forth. Handle their issues and queries. Schedule a number of classes that align with members of various time zones. Don’t neglect to document the session and share it with members who missed attending the dialogue.
Easy methods to drive participation
Engaged on documentation doesn’t sound interesting to many of us, notably engineers. An occasion like Docathon wants creativity and innovation to draw attendees.
Gamify
Gamification is the appliance of sport considering and typical parts of the sport enjoying in non-game contexts. Gamification fosters engagement, participation, and competitiveness by turning monotonous and tedious duties into thrilling and enjoyable actions.
We stored members engaged and all through the occasion by gamification of various phases. Gamification will increase the extent of engagement among the many members.
- Create real-time Leaderboards to current aggressive placement throughout the occasion. Share statistics periodically throughout the occasion, similar to while you attain 100 bugs, high three groups on leaderboards, main bug reporters, classes of bugs, and so forth.
- Present countdown timer on the wall/display.
- Be inventive together with your communication – this helps create higher viewers engagement. Right here’s an instance:
Incentivize participation
Incentives create an thrilling ambiance and encourage participation. Reward the members who uncover useful bugs, discover useful data, or present worthwhile suggestions. In case you’re holding one in your workplace, you can even present pizza, snacks, and drinks to all members as a token of appreciation for his or her efforts and time.
We gave out three awards for the successful groups.
- Prime Group : $1,000
- 2nd Group: $700
- third Group: $400
We additionally introduced particular classes for people who carried out exceptionally nicely. These had been the classes and rewards:
- Worth differentiator – $100
- Competitors equalizer – $100
- Greatest bug report- $100
- Consumer advocate – $100
We may excite our members and interact them by way of these inventive concepts. Occasion outcomes are higher when members have a constructive expertise.
Conclusion
Documentation is likely one of the vital elements clients take into account when deciding on a SaaS product. When documentation turns into an afterthought, it leaves the customers at nighttime and prevents them from attaining their objectives. If clients shouldn’t be in a position to entry the solutions to their questions/queries with minimal effort, they’ll discover an alternate.
Creating the most effective buyer expertise requires you to prioritize documentation. We at MoEngage, acknowledge the affect of product documentation on buyer satisfaction and loyalty. The documentation and product groups at MoEngage are engaged on the problems discovered throughout the Docathon to create a greater buyer expertise.
What’s stopping you from planning your first Docathon?
What’s Subsequent?
- Learn the way we innovate and use know-how to drive enterprise affect on this article.
- Interviewing with our testing groups? Right here’s a cheat sheet to crack a MoEngage interview.
- Examine MoE Hacks 2.0 – our very personal tech Hackathon right here.
