Development of an Interactive Online Help System

The customer develops software products for the healthcare industry and particularly for business management and performance. These products leverage highly distributed technologies and provide real time information on business management and performance.

Problem Statement

The customer has a highly transactional and distributed architecture with several teams working on different layers of the product. The customer in this case wanted to add new functionality to their product in the form of an interactive online help system as part of the new release. The challenge was to create a highly integrated help system, using RoboHelp and Microsoft Word, with integrated flowcharts and diagrams created in Visio. The customer also needed to update their existing Requirements and Design documentation.

Development Process

1.	Project Planning
2.	Forumulation of Requirements Document
3.	Creation of a Detailed Design Document
4.	Development of the Online Help System Offsite
5.	Assistance with Integration and Performance Testing of Requirements
6.	Transfer of Information to the Facility for Maintenance and Development

Result

Using an Offsite model to develop the online help application, The Write Choice technical writer team interfaced with the customer's internal team to understand the business and functional requirements. Using extremely detailed and elaborate design documents that drilled down the business process The Write Choice technical writing team provided a highly effective Online Help System with detailed mapping to the individual modules in the software, and assisted the developers by creating updated design and requirements documents.

The model provided the customer with improved time to market. The customer was able to benefit from a significant cost savings - approximately 40 percent of the costs of developing the application onsite.