Documentation Checklist

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Documentation, whether help files, manuals, or team reports, needs to be planned into your project from the beginning. When you’re thinking about documentation, consider these factors:

  • Help files and manuals are for users, not for you.

  • Most help should be context sensitive and task based.

  • Use “See Also” topics for additional background information.

  • Most help topics should be short and focused.

  • Use the table of contents, index, search, and hypertext features to organize the help in multiple ways.

  • Consider supplementing words with visual aids.

  • Test the help as well as the application.

  • Provide a way for users to send feedback easily.

  • Supply developer help in a familiar format.

  • Use a printed manual for tutorials, overviews, and installation instructions.

  • Create development logs and postmortem reports to aid team development.

By now I’ve discussed much of the development process, and I’ve mentioned several tools that you’ll want to run on a regular basis (such as unit testing and documentation tools). In the next chapter, I’ll focus on the actual process of building your software. There’s more to it than just running the compiler.



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Coder to Developer. Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
ISBN: 078214327X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 118

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