Technical Writing – A Checklist For a Software Document Writing Project

© 2009-2010 Ugur Akinci
Here is a general checklist that you might find useful to make sure your software documentation project does not miss anything:

• Do you have access to the software project’s Scope Document?
• Do you have access to the functional and marketing specs of the software project?
• Have you written a Documentation Plan for this project?
• Is your Documentation Plan approved by the client or the authorized project manager?
• Do you know who will review the document?
• Do you have an approved Template for this project?
• Do you know where you’ll get your image and/or multi-media files from?
• Do you have an official Style Guideline that you’ll follow?
• Will there be any single-sourced collaterals (like a help file, or a different-sized version of the same document) compiled from the same source file?
• Will you need any hardware to complete the project?
• Will you need to travel to other locations to gather information for the project?
• Will you need to interview any Subject Matter Experts to complete the project?
• Will you need to participate in or arrange any teleconferences or webinars to gather information or report about the project?
• What version management platform will you use for document version control? (MS SourceSafe? Agile?)
• How will you backup your files?
• Will you write the document alone or will there be other technical writers on the project?
• Will there be any in-house peer review required before you submit the document to official management review?
• Will the end product be localized and translated to other languages?
• Do you need to follow any special guidelines for localization?
• Will you have any access to a tracker system to incorporate the results of bug reports?
• Will you need to compile any training materials/sets from the source files?

If you take the necessary measures and precautions ahead of time depending on the answers to these questions you’ll have a more successful documentation performance.