Bruce Pelton

I am a technical writer with 37 years of experience creating information that helps users succeed. I enjoy applying my experience and knowledge to help products thrive!

Team Lead

IBM Canada, Ottawa, ON 2023 – 2025

• Advocated for documentation team in cross-functional meetings.
• Managed Jira project; assigned work to writers; monitored progress toward project milestones.
• Supervised team of three writers for two major Cognos Analytics software releases and several minor releases, for example, IBM Cognos Analytics 12.1.0.
• Mentored two junior writers; trained them on authoring and publishing processes; edited their work; gave them feedback – both positive and constructive.
• Championed documentation by posting in Slack, speaking up in high-visibility meetings, and producing high-quality documentation.
• Demonstrated a new embedded help system to development and support teams.
• Synchronized the publishing of final documentation with other deliverables on the GA date.

Senior Content Developer

Cognos | IBM Canada, Ottawa, ON 2001 – 2025

• Led by example, earning the trust of colleagues.
• Researched, wrote, and delivered on schedule clear and accurate IBM Cognos information products in HTML5 and PDF formats.
• Created architecture diagrams that illustrated, for example, IBM Cognos Analytics for Jupyter Notebook Server and IBM Cloud Object Storage.
• Coordinated the deployment and maintenance of documentation suites of more than 20 IBM products.
• Improved product usability by providing UI text during the design phase.
• Collaborated effectively with Product Management, Development, Quality Control, Support, and Globalization teams.
• Created end-user product videos.
• Improved customer experience by 1) helping to identify common issues that generated support calls and then 2) writing troubleshooting topics with workarounds.
• Communicated seamlessly with teammates around the world.
• Learned and documented complex technologies.
• Adapted to many changes in process and tools. Some examples are: source control systems (VSS > Perforce > internal FileNet system > GitHub); issue tracking systems (RTC > Jira); and authoring tools (FrameMaker > Arbortext > Oxygen > Adobe Experience Manager).

Technical Writer

BNR | Nortel, Ottawa, ON 1988 – 2001

• Designed and authored user cards and maintenance guides for a small business phone system.
• Wrote context-sensitive help about CAD/CAM software for a circuit board design system.
• Authored user guides for several internal software products.
• Wrote proposals for the business development of Internet Data Centers.

• Algonquin College, Ottawa, ON
  Technical Writer certificate -  1988
• Queen’s University, Kingston, ON
  Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering -  1985