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> We've
> got about a month between the code freeze and the docs freeze. This makes me
> nervous. Does this seem like a reasonable amount of time to finish up?
I think I may be voicing an unpopular opinion here, and it definitely goes
against my innate desire to provide the best documentation for every release,
but for a version 1.0 software, you can usually get away with some pretty
minimal documentation. If you overreach by trying to create conceptual,
procedural, tutorial, installation, and troubleshooting information in your
first release, you're likely to get 40% done on each of them. Which isn't a
good thing.
Pick the aspects of the documentation that are the most important, and work on
them first. Limit yourself to maybe installation guide and procedures. (That's
what we limited ourselves to in the first release of an application at my last
job.) If you have time left at the end and all of the procedures are
documented, and the installation guide is done, throw some conceptual in there,
too. But keep your goals small. If your 1.0 release is like most 1.0 releases,
the 1.1 release is going to follow closely on its heels. You'll be able to
start expanding once you've reached completion on the procedural content.
Customers' expectations for 1.0 release documentation aren't very high, so if
you provide them with good, thorough, and complete procedures, they're likely
to kiss your feet. And if you have a 1.0 installation guide that actually
accurately reflects what they're supposed to do, you'll surprise the heck out
of 'em. (At least, this is what my experience would suggest.)
-David Castro
thetechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com
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