When a product's development starts, its planning consists of initial technical documentation, development, testing and user documentation. Here we will discuss the user documentation task.
Getting Task For Documentation
Congratulations you got a task for writing a document. It sometimes seems easy, “Oh yes, I know about this technology. I can write about it.” But in reality, when you start to write you can get into problems if you haven’t collected any information, you don’t know for whom you are writing, what is the purpose of writing it, how many pages you have to write, in how many days you have to write etc. So to avoid the confusion and mess at the end we move to the next heading.
Analysis
The first step is to analyze two important things, the Audience and the Task. In the former analysis you have to explore the audience you are to write for. Are they Novices? Do they have any knowledge about computers? Have they ever used a system like this one before? Are they familiar with the environment and terms used for the technology you are to explain to them? These things are very vital for the writers to know before they start to write.
In the task analysis, writer has to know how the user will attempt to work on the technology provided. Do they need procedures and exercises to perform functions? Are they interested in installing the system themselves? Or they want the company employees to do it for them? Do they want training manual with each and every term defined? If a writer knows these facts, it becomes a lot easier to write.
Manual Plan
In this step, ask your Team Lead or other person in the lead about the final delivery date and what are the Alpha and Beta testing dates. In Alpha and Beta testing the manual is also tested accordingly to verify the information and product are similar. And nothing is out of the way.
Manual Format
The writer should know whether the Manual is the final form of the documentation for a product. Is the manual required to convert into a Help file? Is it going to be an HTML form later? This information is a must to know, because when a word document is converted to HTML, many problems arise, one of them is the links. When a manual is converted to a help file, the major problems that come are; How to arrange the hierarchy according to the manual sections, which parts to be given in See Also and how the procedures will be shown.
Structuring and Writing for the next article.
References:
Cunningham, Donald, H., Cohen, Gerald. 1984. Creating Technical Manuals: A Step-by-step Approach to Writing User-friendly Instructions. Published by McGraw Hill. ISBN 0894950517, 9780894950513
Bremer, Michael. 1999. The User Manual Manual: How to research, write, test, edit and produce a software manual. Published by Untechnical Press. ISBN 0966994914, 9780966994919
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