Category: Notes about docs

  • Capturing Ideas – Management Advice

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  • Organizing a Reference Guide

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    Most of us have observed that products tend to become more complex as they evolve.  This is not unusual, even for a set of golf clubs.  Increasing product and service complexity is a natural consequence of working in a competitive environment. To address this, product documentation should be capable of moving in lockstep with product… Read more

  • How Much Detail Should be Documented?

    Adding a lot of detail to a technical document can be expensive to create and maintain. Therefore, this is an important issue to get on the table up front. If you have a document that is only going to be used by users and trainers, extensive details should be reduced to a minimum. But if… Read more

  • Teach Them HOW it works!

    And by that, I don’t mean giving away the keys to the store.  Keep the “how you build it” stuff to yourselves. What you should do is produce a document that contains something like a “Theory of Operation” section. One of the best examples of this may be found in vehicle repair manuals. Many of… Read more

  • A Note about User Documentation

    What is a User? On many occasions, while discussing the term “User” with companies, we hear a lot of interpretations about Users in general. Here is a summary of one interaction: After a half-hour discussion, just about everybody agreed that the definition of a User is “What a User been assigned to DO” with a… Read more