Your commitment to the user guide
You cannot outsource your documentation project have a successful software user guide at the end of it unless you have a commitment to the project. In practice, that commitment mainly involves investing time to answer our questions to you.
One of the major problems with bad user guides is that they do not answer users' questions. To make sure that the user guide is effective, we ask many questions, so that we understand how your system works. The user guide can then truly guide people to use your software.
At different stages of the project, we ask different types of questions. Typically, this is what you can expect:
- At the initial stage of user guide development, you give an overview of your software. Typically, that is through discussion.
- When we look at your software in detail, your team must answer detailed questions. Every few days, we will send you a document with approximately five to fifteen questions.
- Sometimes, the answers contain apparent conflicts, which your team must explain.
- Sometimes, the easiest way for us to understand is to talk with you. After we do that, we send you a document that summarises our understanding, and which we ask you to confirm.
- After we understand your software, we produce detailed content for the user guide. Your team must review the content carefully.
The result is an accurate user guide, which presents the 'reality' that you want to give to your customers.
