Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2003

Meeting Report: June 2003

Process—The Most Important Product

Denise Asplund

Denise Asplund, Director of Technical Publications Resources at Siebel Systems, Inc. in Emeryville, wrapped up the chapter’s spring programs in June with a presentation to give us all hope—yes, it is possible to keep the revolving door of documentation from spinning out of control.

A leading provider of customer relationship management software that helps businesses track customers and their needs, Siebel has a "bookshelf" of more than 175 titles for 300 products. HTML and PDF are the methods of delivery, with a push to move more titles to HTML.

At present, the Technical Publications Department has about 50 people on staff; half are dedicated writers while the other half provide editing, graphics, QA, and production support.

Staying Ahead of the Game

The Siebel Technical Publications Department has solved the perennial problem of documentation updates and drifting engineering deadlines by generating monthly releases.

The product managers and engineers meet weekly to prioritize the books that require updating.
The publications staff updates those documents and makes a release on the fourth Friday of each month.

The strategy ensures that the most important documentation changes get out to customers in a timely way, while sparing the documentation staff the burden of endless hours of overtime at the end of engineering releases. In short, the monthly release strategy keeps customers happy and boosts employee morale.

Asplund noted that the department is unique in that the staff is centralized rather than split out to engineering, support, and marketing groups, and responds to customer needs as defined by product managers.

As might be expected, the Siebel Technical Publications Department has processes for everything. For example, the style guide is continually updated by a well-documented process, and changes are published at weekly meetings and through email.

Looking Forward

Siebel is focused on the future. The Technical Publications Department has three persons dedicated to R&D who continually assess department processes.

Asplund anticipates that the department will embrace a content management system approach to documentation, put greater emphasis on modular writing, and move to XML. As with so many other companies, Siebel is considering outsourcing its QA work to India.

Asplund says it’s a great privilege to work with the group at Siebel. Despite layoffs over the past two years, Siebel is poised to hire again. She cautions that hiring takes a long time and involves a long process of interviews.

According to her, the Siebel writer is technically competent, independent, creative, flexible, and able to maintain focus in a dynamic environment. And, one might add, dedicated to observing process.

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