A lot of what I’m working on lately involves the best process to accomplish something, which can mean a lot of step by step logic. Often when working on such docs I end up having to repeatedly reorganize them as I realize during the writing that I hadn’t entirely thought out what came before what (the structure of this sentence is a living example of my not having an entirely linear mind).

I’m not a strict outliner for shorter-than-book documents, but I found a kind of middle ground that helps me organize my thoughts without feeling bound into a rigid outline format: rough flowcharting. Somehow it feels more fluid to me than outlining even though I suspect most outlining tools have most of the same features as the charting tools I use. Maybe it’s a visual thinker thing.

In the world of Macs, Omnigraffle is a great tool to just rapidly throw together a step by step chart. I probably underutilize it and there are some features I haven’t figured out–for someone who writes I am ironically also someone who fiddles first and looks at docs when I give up, most of the time–but the ability to just make a series of linked boxes with step explanations, move them around and relink if I need to, etc., seriously comes in handy. Even better, when I’m done, I can clean up the chart and make a more official-looking flowchart out of it to include with the document.

Part of my focus as Knowledge Manager at Splunk is capturing best practices, particularly the best practices around using Splunk. Gathering this information is a lot like researching a story, getting me to draw on:

• My own knowledge of how to use Splunk (hey, I’m not a guru but I have been using it for over a year now)
• Our sales engineers who encounter what customers want to do in the field
• Folks in support who hear a lot about what aspects of Splunk might be confusing, along with what folks are trying to do with it
• Our developers, who can give me those sweet little tips and tricks that I can share to help people do things more efficiently
• The folks in professional services, who definitely encounter what customers are doing in the field.
• Doc writers, who spend a lot of time explaining the nitty gritty of things and can often have some pretty interesting tips.
• And really anyone else in the company who might have something interesting to share.