Tracking Updates

Creating a system to track updates to known issues once the issue is resolved.

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Role: Lead writer

Tools: Google sheets, Jira, WordPress

Skills: Project management, critical thinking

Team size: 1

Timeline: On-going

Outcome: Ensured published issues are current and accurate

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CHALLENGE

Our writing team didn't have a defined way to ensure documentation for known issues was updated once the issue was resolved.

Once an article for a known issue was published, the writer task was considered complete, and there was no system to follow up or update the article when the issue was resolved.

After time, this led to an impressive backlog of outdated articles, and caused confusion and frustration for end-users.

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SOLUTION

Create a system to track articles and the Jira tickets that cause them, as well as implement a timeline to ensure writers are continuously checking Jira tickets to update known issues when they are resolved.

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PROCESS

1. Tracking after publication

The first challenge was to determine how to track articles after they are published. Ultimately I ended up creating a Google Sheet to track the following information:

Article title and link
Related engineering ticket
Ticket status
Timeline for next check-in

Here's an excerpt from the tracker:

2. Using the tracker

The process for using the tracker is as follows:

After publishing, add the required fields to the tracker.
In the Next check field, use the EDATE function to add three months to the Last check.

Note: This automatically updates the Days until check field, which counts the days between the current date, and the Next check field.

3. Create a reminder to check the ticket on the Next check date.

4. If there's no change, update the Last check field and repeat.

3. Updating published articles

If an issue has been resolved, I create a documentation story to update the published article. I then assign the ticket to myself or another writer based on workload.

✔️

IMPLEMENTATION

The new tracking system was implemented. This process is being continuously improved.