■ Establishing a company glossary ■ The key to successful developer documentation ■ The cost of the cloud Communicator The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators Autumn 2023 W r i t i n g f o r S a a S 11 Establishing a Company Glossary and Terminology Committee for Content Consistency and Clarity at Any SaaS Company by Jamie Nickerson Glossary By establishing a company glossary and terminology committee, SaaS companies can realize the valuable benefit of improved content consistency and clarity. This is particularly essential for start-ups and scale-ups, as the use of inconsistent terminology across different teams can create confusion and necessitate time-consuming efforts to align product naming and content in the future. Through the implementation of a centralized glossary and the collaboration of a dedicated committee, your company can ensure that all teams and departments adhere to standardized terminology, leading to a cohesive and seamless user experience. This streamlines communication, reduces misunderstandings, and enhances brand perception. Additionally, by eliminating the need for constant revisions and realignments, businesses can allocate their resources more efficiently, accelerating their growth and maximizing productivity. Overall, the establishment of a company glossary and terminology committee directly contributes to improved operational efficiency, enhanced customer satisfaction, and sustainable business growth. To start simplifying content creation and minimize the need for constant change management at your company, try these steps: Step 1: Analyze the Current Content Alignment Strategy and Assess If There Are Problems with It Identify if terminology consistency is the issue or if there are other challenges. For example, if your thinking aligns with any of the three points below, it might be worth considering a terminology committee and a glossary creation process: “There’s a disjointed user experience and confusion within our user base.” “Our company has lots of unavoidable and needless clarification meetings for colleagues in customer-facing departments, like support, training, implementation, and customer success.” “Content creators are frustrated because there is a consistent misalignment in written materials (both internal and external, either or).” Step 2: Find and Gather Content Alignment Allies Who Might Be Facing the Same Content Creation Challenges Once you identify there’s a content alignment challenge, start asking other content creators in your organization if they might also be facing similar challenges to those mentioned in Step 1. Consider departments such as Marketing, Product Marketing, Product, Translation, Product Design, Content Design, Learning and Experience Design, Training and Implementation, Customer Success, and Product Support as possible allies. Create a communication channel, such as a Slack channel or Teams chat, to discuss terminology-related questions and concerns. Encourage all content allies to join the channel and contribute to the discussion. Highlight the benefits of their contributions and how it benefits them; this creates buy-in, which is needed when agreeing on a process and way of doing things that work for everyone. Step 3: Create a Democratic Process That Works for All Content Alignment Allies As a note, before you start this step, it’s highly recommended to involve your manager or a senior member of your department to provide feedback and check with them to see if a terminology committee will work for your company because, if it doesn’t value content strategies, it may not be worth the investment (and this is, arguably, a whole other problem that a terminology committee and glossary can’t solve, unfortunately). Once you identify the problem and have buy-in from content creators, start creating your process to make your terminology committee and glossary work for everyone: Pick a time that works for all and make it a recurring meeting. You can create a poll to find the best meeting time for all content allies. Outline the goals and objectives, which can be written in an internal document or intranet resource. What do you want the terminology committee to achieve? What does the whole process look like? How will the committee members submit new terms or submit a request to review or revise existing terms? Step 4: Consult Your Content Allies and Conduct Research Before Your Meeting to Ensure the Best Decision for All Users Once you have an idea of what the process looks like, ask members to submit words that are causing difficulty. Take the submitted terms and review them in your communication channel from Step 2. Consider the terms from all angles: How will the terminology affect your users and the market you're targeting? Will the terms work in both the US and the UK if your company is global? Communicator Autumn 2023 12 Glossary Jamie Nickerson Jamie is a Senior Technical Writer at Aylo and has almost a decade of experience delivering user content journeys. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/ in/jamieanickerson/ Portfolio: www.therougecanuck.ca Are the words easy to translate for localization projects? Are the terms legal to use in all jurisdictions? Involve your legal experts to avoid using terms with legal implications in certain regions. Try to base terminology decisions on research, not opinions. Encourage committee members to explain their term choices with hard evidence, like user research or statements from industry-leading bodies. Avoid subjective opinions that only benefit a few people and not your end-users. Step 5: Create a Meeting to Share, Discuss, and Solidify Terminology Findings with All Content Allies This meeting can be ad hoc or a timely recurrence; it’s going to depend on how much work needs to be done and what works for your workload and the workload of your colleagues. When you’re prepared to meet: Present terms for the glossary that were problematic in the past, as discussed in Step 4. Present terms from the research period to all content allies. Explain why the terms were chosen, based on factual findings and research. If someone disagrees with a term that was talked about in your communication channel, ask them to provide objective, factual findings as to why. Decide as a group what’s best. Don’t forget to be kind, diplomatic, and genuinely hear everyone out; you’re all at the meeting with the same goal! Record the meeting or take meeting notes for reference. Sometimes content allies won’t be able to make it and might be curious about what happened or what was achieved. Step 6: Create and Maintain the Glossary After each meeting, update the glossary. Make the glossary accessible to all members of your organization so that you and anyone else can reference it when discrepancies in terminology arise or if someone forgets what a term references, how it’s spelled and formatted, or if the term needs clarity. Keep in mind that you will probably need a change management process. Anticipate changes to the industry or product that could render a term irrelevant or incorrect. This could be due to the creation of new products, or result out of updates or insights from someone outside the committee. It's important to prioritize the greater good over individual opinions, and again, keep all decisions fact-based. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen, but it can: for example if a co-worker disagrees with a term and refuses to follow the glossary, lead with curiosity, and perhaps ask them why. Make them feel involved and show them the benefits of the committee and how they can be a part of it. If you’re not able to make headway, consider talking about it with your manager or senior member of the organization. This goes back to the importance of getting your manager or a senior member aboard in Step 3. Step 7: Ensure That the Organization Is Aware of the Glossary and Try to Get All Committee Members to Promote and Reference It After completing the glossary creation process, it's important to communicate it to everyone in the organization. This creates awareness and allows for further discussion and feedback from unexpected sources like new hires or higher- level management with industry expertise. You’re also opening the door for anyone at your organization to provide constructive and positive feedback. This gives you insight and visibility into something you or any of the content allies might not think of or see. Invite anyone who is passionate and interested to be a part of the process and make them feel seen and included. It’s a win for everyone! In conclusion, these steps can be shaped and moulded to whatever works best for you and your company. Aligning content is crucial to avoiding confusion and ensuring consistent communication. The process involves analyzing the challenge, finding content alignment allies, creating a democratic process that works for all, conducting research, and creating and maintaining a glossary. When choosing terminology, the committee should consider the impact on users, consult with legal, base decisions on research, and avoid subjective opinions. After each meeting, update the glossary and keep it accessible to all members of the organization. It is also important to anticipate changes that could render a term irrelevant and prioritize the greater good over individual opinions. This can help save time and resources and enhance the overall user experience, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention. After all, content design and technical writing are about the most important people: our end-users! To make their content journey as easy and understandable as possible, start with consistent and aligned terminology. Communicator Autumn 2023