In 2021, Canoo Technologies, an electric vehicle company, began hiring many new employees to prepare for production. When it did, a problem emerged: few of the new hires were familiar with its workflow application, Jira, so the help desk became deluged with support calls.
My manager turned to me to solve the problem. “Can you create videos that show people how to use Jira?” Video, in my experience, worked poorly for software training, so I suggested that we create a simple step-by-step tutorial based on static screenshots.
She gave me the go-ahead, so I began creating the tutorial. First I met with a Jira administrator to establish a list of tasks to be accomplished using Jira. Then we did some recorded walk-throughs, which I used to write the steps needed to complete each task.
I made the steps part of an immersive “real-world” scenario, which make them relevant to the everyday user. Finally, I illustrated each step with a large “click here” screenshot. The end result was a simple, clear, engaging PDF tutorial that newbie Jira users loved.
“It also works as a resource,” one remarked. “If I forget how to do something, it’s easy to refer back to it.” Canoo Business Analyst Kairyl Iqbal said about the tutorial, “It’s really helped to reduce the help desk workload and get people up to speed quickly”