Process matters: content design training (3 of 7)

28 May

This is the third in a series of 7 blogs about Scroll’s new content design training modules. It covers the publishing process module, how closely this aligns to content strategy and the need to make it highly interactive and inclusive.

By Andrew Charlesworth

Andrew Charlesworth is a content strategist and Scroll consultant. He specialises in helping organisations measure and improve the impact of their content and efficiently manage its life cycle. He's trained content designers from public and private sector, journalists, and PR execs.

The publishing process module - part of Scroll’s new content design training - more closely resembles a content strategy workshop than any conventional training session. It needs to be highly interactive, and should involve all the actors in the publishing process - those within the content team and those the team interacts with in the process of publishing.

This module may also stretch over more than one 2-hour session if required.

Dealing with legacy processes

Unless a content team is starting completely anew, or has the authority in their organisation to dictate how content is published, it’s difficult to provide a packaged content process solution that can be imposed on the organisation.

Content teams usually inherit a legacy process which has developed organically and is often not fully documented. So the first part of the module is to itemise all the steps in the current process, document who is responsible for action at each step, identify the pain points and analyse why the process is the way it is.

Content teams always complain they are too busy. “We need more people!”, they cry. But more people in an inefficient process won’t make for greater efficiency. They will just use up more management time in annual review meetings.

Using process to change culture

At the beginning of one training gig, I asked the candidates how they will know if the training works. After a moment’s pause, “if the people we work with behave differently,” was the reply.

The organisation had a culture of business managers bullying content designers into publishing content utterly unsuited to the website. It sounded as though I should be training the business managers, not the content designers.

But process can be a powerful lever.

Process defines behaviour, and behaviour over time defines culture.

Some content teams describe their process as ad hoc: they deal with requests on a first-ask, first-served basis (until someone senior queue jumps). But that implies stakeholders can ask for literally anything and the content team has to entertain it.

There has to be a first-pass filter - for example, a site proposition - that defines permissible content and therefore permissible requests. That alone can shave hours off a content team’s working week.

From simple to complex

Normally, you start with a simple process which is often expressed in 4 steps:

Draft.
Review and edit (cyclical as required).
Sign off.
Publish live.

No publishing system is ever that simple. Who drafts? Where does the requirement for drafting come from? What happens after publishing? (Often too little happens after publishing, but that’s the subject of another module.)

This reminds me of when I was a technical author writing manuals for complex hydraulic systems. I’d interview the engineers who designed the system as to how it operated. Then I’d write my instructions.

When the first models rolled out of the production hall, I’d check my instructions. There were always steps the engineers had forgotten – usually the very first steps to the left of my operating flows. For example, the ‘on’ button, which the designer had told me was the first step to operating, was located under a locked panel. And the key to the locked panel was - where?

You get my point.

From opaque to transparent

The more you dig into an organisation’s business process, the more you realise no one in the organisation has complete visibility of all the steps. In a content publishing process some activities are opaque to the stakeholders, and some opaque to the content team. It’s no wonder each side of the process frequently feels frustration with the other.

Once you’ve documented all the steps of the content process, and identified the actors and pain points (sometimes they are the same), you can begin to map a process more suited to the needs and resources of the organisation.

I’ve done this exercise with even quite small private and public sector organisations, who you wouldn't think had the resources or the length of history to evolve convoluted publishing processes. The look of surprise, and sometimes delight, when they see some of the multi-step activities they thought were essential are pointless, is always rewarding.

Changes in action

Of course, there is a yawning gulf between mapping a new process and establishing it as day-to-day practice.

And the last part of the module leans heavily on change-management techniques, using the levers of power and influence, to introduce and establish new ways of working.

The outcome is a customised set of actions to set up, establish and enforce a content publishing process that suits the needs of the organisation, and is commensurate with the resources of the content team.

Scroll’s new modular training

The focus of Scroll’s new modular training is on developing skills that content teams struggle to acquire:

Content design basics
The role of user research
Content process design
Stakeholder management
Taking a brief
Thinking like a user
Accessibility
Discussion, review, and 2i
Co-developing content
Measuring content and audit
Content lifecycle management