Services
Abelard Consulting is a specialist producer of technical documentation and manager of documentation projects. We provide the full spectrum of documentation services: from editing a single document written by others to managing fully out-sourced project teams writing user documentation of many types, in many media and in many languages. Our whole-of-project management encompasses:

• preparation of documentation plans
• job scoping and estimating
• document design
• developing documentation (paper and online)
• author-independent review and editing
• technical illustration and
• localisation.

We can also take on discrete phases in the typical documentation development lifecycle (such as just review and editing, or just localisation).

  Project planning and estimating
Our documentation consultants are experienced developers of documentation plans. We produce plans in accordance with Australian Standards AS 4258, AS 3876, AS 3897, AS 4598, and AS/NZS ISO/IEC 15910 and ISO/IEC 26514. Such plans include deliverable and audience definitions, task breakdowns and estimates, Gantt charts, review plans, and everything else needed to accurately define the documentation project and crystallise stakeholder expectations.

We can also extend the basic documentation plan to include templates, style guidelines, a subject-specific thesaurus (for vocabulary control) and acceptance test criteria.

And when the time comes for the project to begin, we can provide the technical writers to do the work: either in-house or at our offices.

  Products and tools
We have over 30 years' experience producing technical documentation. Our writers have produced standard operating procedures, user manuals, service manuals, getting started guides, release notes, and a host of other end-user documentation, often using single-sourcing methodologies. We fully understand traditional offset and modern digital printing, and tailor our developments accordingly.

Our illustrators and graphic artists work with our technical writers to ensure that the final product is of the quality you would expect from a respected book publisher.

We are also expert developers of online help systems (AIRHelp, WebHelp, FlashHelp, JavaHelp and so on) and online user guides (in PDF, HTML and XML formats). We also produce multimedia software tours and tutorials.

Our authoring tool sets are extensive and include Adobe FrameMaker^®, Adobe InDesign^®, Adobe RoboHelp^®, Adobe Captivate^® and Microsoft Word^®.

  Localisation and translation
Abelard Consulting has built up strong relationships with the technical translator community in Australia and in the United States. Technical translation into Asian, European and South American languages can be integrated into any documentation project (or we can project-manage stand-alone translation projects for you).