Your commitment to the user guide
To outsource your documentation project and have a successful user guide at the end of the project, you must have a commitment to the project. In practice, that commitment primarily involves investing time to answer our questions to you.
The largest problem 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 to learn how your software operates.
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. Two or three times a week, we will send you a document with approximately five to fifteen questions.
- Sometimes, the answers from your team contain apparent conflicts, which your team must explain.
- Sometimes, the easiest way for us to understand is to talk with you. After we talk, 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.