Documenting For Intended Audience

Sometimes it is difficult to determine what documentation should exist for a project, and what each document should contain. One good solution to this is to look at who you would expect to be the future audiences of documentation, and develop a document for each audience group.

For example, where I work, some groups (each with their own set of documentation) include:

 - Regulators
 - Technical Support Staff
 - Clients
 - Employees

Of course, it is frequently possible to cut-and-paste portions of text or graphics from one group's documentation to another group's copy.

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Generally if you're going to write technical documentation of any kind, you should get answers to these two questions pretty early in the game:

• Who is going to read this?
• What job are they going to do with the information?

--BenKovitz

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CategoryDocumentation