I’ve been on my fair share of remote writing projects, including technical writing, contributing to books and writing for publications. Working on such projects and hearing from clients and colleagues about successful (and less so) remote writing projects, I’ve come to see that actions of both the writer and the client can influence the outcomes.

Here are my five keys to successful remote writing projects gleaned from my technical writing career:

Good documentation. I couldn’t agree more with Thursday’s recent post about the need for telecommuters to have good documentation. Managing a remote writing project can be a challenging task, so project artifacts like statements of work (SOWs) and status reports can be a helpful audit tool for both the writer and the client. You should also consider documentation for remote writing projects to include style guides, templates and source material for the writing assignment(s).

Remote access. Many of my remote writing projects require access to the technology systems I am contracted to document, so remote access is critical to the success of much or my work. Even if you aren’t a technical writer, a remote login can be useful to gain easy  access to project files, internal mailing lists, collaboration tools, and the like. You should also not just look to just the client to provide remote access and tools for the project. Because as you are bringing in outside expertise some clients may also look for you to bring new ideas like Google Wave to the table. As a remote writer, you should also plan for some redundancy for times when your home office Internet connection goes down, or you have other communications issues.

Technological self-sufficiency. In talking with colleagues and clients, the need for remote writers to be technologically self-sufficient has been a recurring theme. A writer’s technological self-sufficiency needs to extend to being able to diagnose technical problems and being able to communicate these potential issues in a proactive, clear and concise manner.

Mutually agreed upon publishing formats. Agreeing on publishing formats up front may seem like a common-sense move, but with the proliferation of MS Office alternatives, it is important that everybody on the team can open and manipulate the documents with a minimum of issues.

Managed document review cycle. Getting editorial and technical reviews of a your work completed can sometimes be a struggle, thanks to conflicting reviewer priorities and no writer on-site, standing at the reviewer’s door when the review is late. So it is best to implement a managed review cycle of documents you are writing, including accountability for yourself, accountability on the client/team side, review guidelines, and a schedule.

Do you work as a remote writer? Share your tips and advice below for successful remote writing projects.

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Here are some tips to help better manage document reviews at a distance:

Establish review guidelines. Truth be told, many organizations don’t know how to review and approve a document. As such, it is important to set out how you want your reviewers to check over each document. Your review guidelines should:

• Instruct the reviewers to follow procedures step-by-step. Tell them to point out incorrect steps and identify why the step is in error.
• Encourage the reviewers to look for better ways to present data, or identify if a different function or listing that would work better in the same situation.
• Instruct reviewers to check to see if the artwork (listings, figures, illustrations, tables) corresponds with the references in the text.
• Tell the reviewers to test  each line of program code and describe any problems.

Designate document stakeholders. Have a designated document stakeholder check over the document(s) undergoing review to help set review priorities and free up resources to ensure the document review happens on deadline. The stakeholders can also tie the document review into the overall project plan, if needed.

Identify primary and backup reviewers. This is a commonsense first step when project teams span multiple time zones, and even continents. If the primary reviewer is unavailable to resolve a question, then the team can always go to the backup reviewer.

Set a realistic review schedule. It is rare that a stressed and harried project team can make a full document review in just one pass. So depending on your project schedule, take the initiative to manage expectations and set a review schedule that ensures reviewers are going to add value to the documents they are reviewing.

Use online collaboration and version control. WebWorkerDaily regularly covers the latest in collaboration tools. Using one of these tools can help you better manage the review process with your team.

Use electronic document review tools. With Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat you can mark up and comment on electronic documents just as you can with pen and ink on a hardcopy document — there’s no need to fax documents any more. If your team is reviewing an XML-based document, look towards a solution like LiveTechDocs (I reviewed it for WWD).

LiveTechDocs Application

How do you manage document reviews?

Image credit: svilen001 from sxc.hu.

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Reviewing technical documentation presents a number of challenges in many organizations. Stakeholders and subject matter experts are too busy or too dismissive of documentation to give it a thorough review, meaning project managers and writers often need to follow up with face-to-face meetings. As web workers, we sometimes miss out on the opportunity for face-to-face contact, putting us at a greater disadvantage when managing document technical reviews. Therefore, it is imperative for us to put the right tools and processes in place to manage technical documentation collaboration and reviews.

LiveTechDocs can help. It’s an XML-based online collaboration and document review tool that is designed to handle technical documentation, unlike many of the collaborative editing tools that we’ve reviewed here on WWD.

The product is available in a few different flavors:

• Free Edition with only one project and a reduced number of users
• Writer Edition for freelance writers and small to medium businesses
• Open Source Edition is free to open-source software projects
• Education Edition for educational institutions
• Enterprise Edition for large corporations

LiveTechDocs earns high marks from me for a clean and consistent user interface. It is obvious this startup invested time, money and resources in the application’s user experience.

LiveTechDocs

LiveTechDocs supports both DocBook 4.x and DocBook 5.x as its standard formats. It’s simple to use: Upload your documents to the repository and then publish them. After publishing, it is ready for reviewers via the “Documentation” tab.

Using LiveTechDocs, authors and reviewers can review all of your XML-based documentation online. LiveTechDocs helps you manage the review by structuring the process, helping it be completed on deadline.

Review comments are all accessible from the dashboard. Document authors and management can also respond to reviewer comments from the dashboard, opening up a dialog between reviewer and writer.

Many online collaboration tool vendors have yet to embrace the technical documentation review process. LiveTechDocs includes management tools that provide status reports via email or online about reviewer comments and status and even remind reviewers when they are running late. Such an audit trail is critical for geographically dispersed teams seeking to improve their document review cycles. I’d like to see more collaborative tools adopt such management features.

If you are working on XML-based technical documentation then LiveTechDocs is worth a look for its review, management and collaboration tools.

What tools do you use for managing technical document review?

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