Document Development Life Cycle

DDLC (Document Development Life Cycle) includes the various stages involved in structured document creation. DDLC helps in creation of efficient and quality document creation. The DDLC stages are:
1.Project Start-up
Project start-up generally involves the creation of project plan. It includes understanding the project objectives and constraints in terms of time, quality, and cost. The scope of the project is clearly defined along with standards to be followed throughout the project. This phase also involves identifying key personnel responsible for providing, reviewing, and approving document content.
2.Requirement Analysis
Requirement analysis for documentation includes Audience Analysis, Need Analysis and Task Analysis. You try to understand the product business logic and come up with strategies to achieve the your goal. You also decide the format and the delivery media for the document at this phase.
3.Design
Design phase basically deals with collecting and organizing data. It involves planning the instructional and media strategies and creating the course outline. Workflow of the document is planned in this phaze.
4.Development
Document development requires actual writing of the document, and integration of the various components (graphics, glossary, search items) of the document. This phase also involves document reviews and revisions and management of documentation issues. Now, the document is ready for testing.
5.Edit & Proofread
Peer-review is done to find errors and mark corrections, it involves parameters like correctness, completeness, adherence to standards, and usability.
6.Publishing
After updating and fixing the the errors the document is ready for publishing. The hard work of this phase relates to actual delivery of the document to its target audience.
7.Maintainance
Maintenance involves maintaining the deliverables. For example, it may involve content reuse analysis and elimination of redundant data from the document sets. It may also include template revision or inclusion of new product features.