Workflow
With extremely aggressive deadlines we constantly ran into bottlenecks where the release was waiting on a final approval from an external team - be it approval on a graphic, verbiage, functionality or final QA. After assessment of the weak points, I rearranged the timeline for a more seamless flow.
Before
Previously, with a one week turn around for graphics delivery to first round QA we were lacking approval of crucial content. This not only caused issues for production in week one, but required QA to adapt changes to content during final checks for release, causing heightened tension between teams and a greater risk for error.
After
With the addition of content meetings* occurring during the beginning stages of a Tip's creation we were able to create a localization specific game plan and reach out to teams usually two to four weeks in advance. At this point we could obtain approvals and set a guide for QA.
*Content Meetings
With the push to move away from global content and focus on region specific, I began leading meetings with the US graphics team to get an idea of what a Tip was portraying and the content they were planning on using - with this information we were free to start moving in a lateral, yet slightly different direction.
*Asset Requests
Teaming with individuals in Marcom, Business Affairs and app specific teams I was able to set up timelines so requests no longer came to them at random. We also built a database and standard form with expected turn around times, creating alerts for updates and the ability to track anything we had done in past years. With this new standard we were able to work more efficiently with the most variable content to date, usually having all content approved before the graphics delivery.
In addition to app specific teams helping us, we were able to return the favor by testing functionality in most regions and logging any bugs we came across.
*Translation Requests
Similar to Asset Requests, we were able to team with translators to localize user content, or content that is not in the software, such as names, text messages, calendar events, etc.
Working with software engineers I created a template that held the US English text, this was imported into the translation software's system and the translators could create user content Xliff files that we would then run through our tools.
Having previously sent this after the graphics content, we would often not have translations returned until the end of cycle one thereby delaying production. With this update, we often had translations returned before graphics were delivered.
*QA Meetings
Because nobody likes redoing their work or addressing issues more than once, I teamed with QA to add them into our production workflow, and not consider them to be an after thought.
By adding weekly meetings we were able to discuss top tier issues that were seen so we could approach issues not language by language, but as an overall issue to be addressed. Doing this significantly cut our bug count and alleviated the overlap between projects in QA and projects in cycle one that were on their way to QA.