Chapter 17: Documenting Your Software Project 343 Odds
Chapter 17: Documenting Your Software Project 343 Odds are that you didn t read it any more than the user wants to read what you write. Why? Because you think the documentation that accompanied your purchase is worthless, too long, and was written by someone who doesn t speak your native language, is inaccurate, wrong, confusing. . . . You get the idea. We ll let you in on a secret: The For Dummies empire was built to fill a gap between the needs of software users and the worthless documentation they received from manufacturers. You want the documentation you read to give you the answer to the question you have in a way you can understand it. Then you want to move on with your life. Amazingly, that is what the user of your software wants from the documentation you create, as well. This is another area where it can often pay huge dividends if you can afford to have a technical writer as part of the team. Having an experienced person in this field can lessen the burden on the team. The following sections offer broad areas of advice for creating documentation for your software product. Read The Practical Guide to Project Management Documentation by John Rakos, Karen Dhanraj, Scott Kennedy, Laverne Fleck, Steve Jackson, and James Harris (Wiley) for more information on creating project documentation. Your company probably has specific guidelines that you should follow, as well. Using the project scope as a reference The starting point of anything the user is to see should be the project scope. Why did this software get created in the first place? What purpose does it fulfill? The user is using the software for that very purpose, and the only thing they want to know is how to accomplish this specific task. Begin with the scope, and then work through the operations, always focusing on the fact that the user hopes to reach the end point as quickly (and painlessly) as possible. Establishing operational transfer Operational transfer, the movement from the project implementation phase to the support phase, is about more than just the user coming to understand your new application to the point of being productive. It also represents the availability of the project team and the supporting IT staff to help users. You need to coordinate, that is, really communicate, the interaction of the folks that ll be using your software, the department that will support your software, and the project team that created the software.
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