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Cody Anthony

ROSA Jobs-to-be-Done Content Redesign

In early 2022, ROSA documentation had evolved organically through rapid feature releases, resulting in information architecture primarily organized around new product features rather than customer workflows. Voice-of-Customer data and engagement metrics suggested that new customers were struggling with the Day 1 getting started experience. The documentation challenge spanned the ROSA User Guide—from getting started procedures to policy references—requiring a comprehensive restructuring approach rather than isolated fixes.

I spent Q1 2022 conducting a ROSA content audit to establish a plan for aligning ROSA documentation with emerging jobs-to-be-done best practices. The audit, informed by support case patterns and engagement telemetry, revealed several broad issues: stale getting started workflows in need of updates, error-prone CLI copy-paste procedures, fragmented and complex policy documentation, and feature-centric page organization. When AWS launched its organization-wide initiative to migrate documentation from a feature-centric model to a JTBD model, I had already mapped the restructuring strategy based on VOC data and was positioned to execute immediately.

Implementation

Section titled “Implementation”

Consolidated cluster creation workflows - Merged duplicate “auto mode” and “manual mode” getting started pages (identical except for step #1’s --mode flag) into a single guide with console/CLI tabs, eliminating premature deployment path decisions and allowing customers to toggle between approaches mid-workflow.

Environment variables for CLI - Introduced environment variables in deployment procedures, transforming error-prone copy-paste workflows into clean, reproducible commands and reducing configuration errors from mistyped values.

Unified policy reference - Restructured AWS managed policies documentation for ROSA from a confusing two-page split into a single, scannable reference aligned with AWS documentation standards, simplifying navigation for external customers and facilitating more streamlined internal reviews.

Customer-goal page titles - Retitled pages throughout the User Guide to match customer goals (“Create your first cluster”) rather than feature names, improving findability and aligning with jobs-to-be-done framework.

Red Hat coordination - Maintained regular coordination with Red Hat technical writers to ensure IA changes complemented their parallel documentation, providing a coherent cross-vendor narrative regardless of which documentation set customers accessed.

Customer Impact

Section titled “Customer Impact”

Support ticket patterns shifted after the restructure, demonstrating measurable improvements across multiple metrics:

  • Reduced support ticket volume for deployment workflows
  • Better customer success rates for first cluster deployments
  • Lower bounce rates for getting started workflows (Adobe Analytics)
  • Faster time-to-first-success through consolidated, workflow-based guidance

Tools & methodologies used:

  • Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) content strategy framework
  • Adobe Analytics for engagement data
  • Support case pattern analysis
  • Cross-company coordination with Red Hat technical writers

Documentation Resources

Section titled “Documentation Resources”

Live Documentation: