Source: docs. That will help organize the work process and provide a clear metric to monitor progress. A source code document is a technical section that explains how the code works. The main users of the source code documents are software engineers. Try to keep the document simple by making short sections for each element and supporting them with brief descriptions. There are different types of user acceptance testing in agile.
We have outlined the most common:. A quality management plan is an analog of a requirement document dedicated to testing. This document sets the required standard for product quality and describes the methods to achieve this level.
The plan helps to schedule QA tasks and manage testing activity for product managers, but, it is mainly used for large-scale projects. A test strategy is a document that describes the software testing approach to achieve testing objectives. This document includes information about team structure and resource needs along with what should be prioritized during testing. A test strategy is usually static as the strategy is defined for the entire development scope.
A test plan usually consists of one or two pages and describes what should be tested at a given moment. This document should contain:. A test case specifications document is a set of detailed actions to verify each feature or functionality of a product.
Usually, a QA team writes a separate specifications document for each product unit. Test case specifications are based on the approach outlined in the test plan. A good practice is to simplify specifications description and avoid test case repetitions. Test checklist is a list of tests that should be run at a particular time.
It represents what tests are completed and how many have failed. All points in the test checklists should be defined correctly. Try to group test points in the checklists. This approach will help you keep track of them during your work and not lose any. If it helps testers to check the app correctly, you can add comments to your points on the list. This document should describe known problems with the system and their solutions. It also should represent the dependencies between different parts of the system.
Their documentation informs developers how to effectively use and connect to the required APIs. API documentation is a deliverable produced by technical writers as tutorials and guides.
This type of documentation should also contain the list of all available APIs with specs for each one. As the name suggests, user documentation is created for product users.
However, their categories may also differ. So, you should structure user documentation according to the different user tasks and different levels of their experience.
Generally, user documentation is aimed at two large categories:. The documentation created for end-users should explain in the simplest way possible how the software can help solve their problems. Such user instructions can be provided in the printed form, online, or offline on a device. Here are the main types of the user documents:. The complete manual includes exhaustive information and instructions on how to install and operate the product. It lists the hardware and software requirements, detailed description of the features and full guidelines on how to get the most out of them, example inputs and outputs, possible tips and tricks, etc.
The troubleshooting guide gives end-users information on how to find and resolve possible issues that might arise when using the product.
For a detailed overview, check our article dedicated to user documentation. Some parts of user documentation, such as tutorials and onboarding, in many large customer-based products are replaced with onboarding training. Nevertheless, there are still complex systems remaining that require documented user guides. User documentation requires technical writers to be more imaginative. Online end-user documentation may include the following sections:.
Written in plain language with visual materials and step-by-step instructions included, user guides can become a powerful marketing tool and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Besides, to provide the best service for end-users, you should collect your customer feedback continuously. The wiki system is one of the more useful practices. It helps to maintain the existing documentation. You can create your wiki pages using a wiki markup language and HTML code.
Usually, administration docs cover installation and updates that help a system administrator with product maintenance. Here are standard system administrators documents:. Process documentation covers all activities surrounding product development.
The value of keeping process documentation is to make development more organized and well-planned. This branch of documentation requires some planning and paperwork both before the project starts and during the development.
Here are common types of process documentation:. Plans, estimates, and schedules. These documents are usually created before the project starts and can be altered as the product evolves. Reports and metrics. Reports reflect how time and human resources were used during development. They can be generated on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Consult our article on agile delivery metrics to learn more about process documents such as velocity chats, sprint burndown charts, and release burndown charts.
Working papers. The majority of process documents are specific to the particular moment or phase of the process. As a result, these documents quickly become outdated and obsolete. But they still should be kept as part of development because they may become useful in implementing similar tasks or maintenance in the future. Also, process documentation helps to make the whole development more transparent and easier to manage. The main goal of process documentation is to reduce the amount of system documentation.
In order to achieve this, write the minimal documentation plan. List the key contacts, release dates, and your expectations with assumptions. Product roadmaps are used in Agile software development to document vision, strategy, and overall goals of the project.
Roadmaps are used as process documents to keep the course of development in sync with initial goals. Depending on the type of product roadmap, it can express high-level objectives, prioritization of tasks, the sprint timeline, or low-level details.
Naturally, this approach relates mostly to customer-facing product documentation rather than system docs or API docs aimed at technical folks. With develop-facing documentation, you want to try to be comprehensive. Minimum Viable Documentation is an approach that makes sense when you have limited access to technical writing resources, and you have to produce relatively large amounts of documentation at speed.
It means that you aim for the minimum amount of content that you need to be successful, and no more. Software documentation can easily fall under the radar until the last minute unless you make a concerted effort to prioritize through the Software Development Lifecycle. Hire technical writers who can promote the value of documentation within your company — Splunk has some great advice on how to do this. Using the same tools as your development team can really help with this, since your documentation is far more visible.
Resourcefulness and eagerness are key. When you screen tech writer candidates, look for a real appetite for discovery. This means empowering everyone on your development team to be a documentarian, from engineering, to product, to support, although not everyone will not directly write the documentation. Especially when you have a complex product that changes frequently, you need to take a conscious approach to how you produce documentation. Your content strategy draws on your audience's definitions in determining the approach you take.
Even if you use Just In Time methodologies, you have to think about your documentation as a whole. For example, do a comprehensive audit of your docs — many companies have the same content living in more than one place, reams of outdated documentation, or content that is just plain wrong.
A documentation content strategy helps you keep on track, allocate resources, and manage your time. It can be particularly helpful for engineering teams, as this article by Increment explores. In software documentation, no one person has all the answers and your technical writers will be evaluated on their ability to get the most about Subject-Matter Experts.
Many of these SMEs will be engineers. Your developers are likely to know the product so well that it may be hard to get practical answers from them that can translate into documentation. Documentation should not only be written by technical writers — it should ideally be a synchronized collaboration between your documentation team, engineers, and support.
You need to make time for the technical review so that your SMEs can verify the accuracy of your documentation, as well as testing your docs on users. We already touched on Quality Assurance QA for your documentation a little when we talked about using Agile methodologies. Documentation should not be published until it has been subject to technical verification, which is the point when QA tests your documentation to see if whatever solution you have presented works.
Your customers should not be the first testers of your documentation, or you have failed to provide working docs. Build this testing phase into your Agile process so that team members leave time to test before the product or feature ships. You also need to include a phase where the relevant members of the product or engineering team review your documentation to check for technical accuracy, so this is where strong relationships between teams come in very handy.
Make sure you formalize your process to ensure all team members appreciate the importance of the documentation. Closing the customer feedback loop is all part of the Agile process. Agile development should be continuous communication between the development team and the customer, at all stages of the process.
From beta testing with a research group, to feedback on the first release, and ongoing feedback from customers, you need to keep your finger on the pulse. Closing the feedback loop means connecting the feedback with the right internal department. If customer support gets an issue with the software, this needs to be passed on to the engineering team and logged as a bug or a feature request.
You absolutely need a style guide for your software documentation, just like you would for your marketing activities. The main things you should cover in your style guide are:. For advice on grammatical choices, such as whether to use the Oxford Comma, you can check standard style guides such as the Chicago Manual of Style.
Adopt a coherent writing style, especially if you are using teams of writers who all write in different styles. It comprehensively formalizes the wishes of a product owner, simplifies communication among members of a development team and minimizes time and money required to develop a final product. Wireframes and UX Roadmap. A wireframe is a part of design documentation in software engineering. A wireframe of a typical page usually does not include images and many colors if any at all but shows logos, body content, search fields, share buttons etc.
Wireframes themselves do not capture the interactions between different pages. To demonstrate what happens if a user pushes a specific button, a UX roadmap is designed. A UX Roadmap is basically all wireframes put together with arrows or other graphical elements depicting what an app will do i.
A UX roadmap is an optional document, meaning that, in some instances, the software may be developed without it. However, as we see from the practice, this document really makes the final result of a project more predictable and, for this reason, we strongly recommend to build it before designing any digital product.
The main goal of wireframes and a product roadmap is the same, i. It also makes a further designing process go smoothly, so a product owner may approve a visual appearance of a product early in the project before the things get way too creative. Development documentation comprises documents created in course of software engineering process.
There are only two main types of them:. Coding documentation. Coding documents constitute a piece of system documentation. Its main aim is to show how the software works and make the logic behind a product much more clear to developers and product owners. Testing documentation. Testing documents are software development documents created as a part of a quality assurance process by testing teams and developers.
They capture how the testing of a product was planned, designed and executed, as well as shows the results received in the end. Testing documentation is needed to explain how a product is validated. There are different types of documents developed throughout testing process, for example, Test Plan, Test Procedure Description, Test Summary Report etc.
They include the following documentation types:. If you want your software project to go smoothly and end up successfully, properly formalized software development documentation is a must.
JavaScript Tutorials jQuery Tutorials. Table of Contents. Document Development Life Cycle. Requirement Analysis Phase. Phase of Designing. Content Development Phase. Publishing Phase. Maintenance Phase.
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