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Writing docs based on specifications is a good way to get out of sync
with the product, but use cases as I know them are nothing like specs.
They're short descriptions of what customers would do with specific
features of the product.
On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 6:26 PM, Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> The idea of basing documentation on use cases makes me nervous. It tells me the development team wants the docs written with only the use cases for source material. But there are ALWAYS gaps, bugs, shortfalls, and just plain mistakes between developing the use cases and cutting the gold master. There will be changes to the design that the technical writer will never know about until he sees the product itself, because the developers will all be too busy hunting bugs, or (happens all too often) they don't consider the tech writer really part of the team and they forgot he's there. Basing product documentation on any kind of design paper instead of basing it on looking at the actual product itself is nothing but a guarantee of documentation that is incomplete and out of phase with reality.There has never been an end-result product that actually works the way the design documents say it should, and I'll bet my entire next month's pay there never will be.
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