All projects I’ve worked on have a few days set aside for the dreaded “documentation.” Clients often try and reduce the billable hours set aside for documentation and when project delivery times are closing its often the last thing on a developers mind, so it gets cut from both sides.
I’ve come to the conclusion that a detailed and long word document, while it may tick the box on the client’s checklist, is an exercise in futility. No-one ever reads it, you’re lucky if you can even find it a year later, and its out of date the moment its written (or if its a rehash of the technical specification its never actually in-date).
My key requirements for user documentation are:
- make it easily accessible from within and from without the system
- have only one repository for the user documentation
- allow people other than the developer to create and edit the documentation
- auto-generate when and if possible