I was asked to document IBM’s new cloud-based version of our WPS enterprise middleware. See the docs here— they were authored in DITA using Arbortext Editor.

This was a great project all around. I had fun learning new technology and I worked with an amazing team of developers in Beijing. (When I traveled to China, they took me and my family to dinner at a famous roast duck restaurant.)

The distance could have been a problem, but wasn’t. We had daily/nightly calls, IMs, and online meetings, and I had my own VM to break while I learned how to use the software. I also had the opportunity to contribute to the GUI Loader design from a usability perspective.

As an author, I contributed heavily to several sections, including Managing the Process Center Repository and Installing, Deploying, and Undeploying Apps in the Runtime Environment.

As an information architect, I spent time working on findability, organization, and ensuring the right content made it into the right version (we had at least 4 versions for each release). In this release, I dug into the Getting Started section. In the previous release, this section was an unwieldy 200+ topics, most of which were too detailed for new users or evaluators. These topics were placed without thought as to where or when users might need or expect to see them.

I performed a thorough content audit, then streamlined the section to about 25 crucial topics. I also made sure we actually had an overview of business process management. When we presented this change to customers and other stakeholders, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

This document + sample code was delivered to customers that wanted to create mobile apps using IBM Business Process Manager and IBM Worklight. See the doc here.

It was featured at the IBM Impact! conference, a yearly event that draws customers and BPM experts from across the world to see what's new and exciting in the upcoming product release.

The sample was targeted toward BPM users who were new to mobile development in general, and often new to Worklight as well. I authored the content in close collaboration with the architect who worked on the project; I did not write the sample code, but I did read it while creating the supporting content.

This document was unusual for IBM: It was authored in MS Word, then exported to PDF.