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I've worked for one company that treated release notes as a powerful
marketing tool, a way to urge our customers to upgrade to the latest
version of our product. We put a LOT of work into these release notes,
formatting them like our standard documentation. I found it interesting
that SMEs outside of the doc team put MUCH more work into reviewing and
editing these than they did for our regular documentation.
These release notes were arranged by module (our product had many
modules), and each one had to address the following:
Name: in the heading we had to use a few words to name/describe the
modification
Function: What it does, ranging from a paragraph to a couple of pages
What's different: How it's different from what it used to be, including
any new softkeys, screens, etc., with screen captures of the new items.
Benefit: Why is this a good thing?
My doc team had the most trouble with the last item - they were not
accustomed to "selling" the features of our product. (Personally I enjoyed
writing these.)
The company I work at now does MUCH simpler release notes, in the form of
a detailed README file, with stark, warts-and-all descriptions of any
changes to our software.
So the thing you need to determine is what does your company want release
notes to accomplish. Then put a corresponding amount of effort into
writing them. Good luck!
- Keith Cronin
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You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason
why we observe daylight savings time.
- Dave Barry
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