Types of documentation needed for the project to be usable.

Last Significant Update:

2024-06-25

Status:

Draft

Comments to:

mensurae@jkoshy.net

Per Cameron Shorter, 2018, documentation can be classified by target audience (ranging from ‘beginner’ to ‘expert’), and feature relevance (ranging from ‘core/common’ to ‘niche’).

We would need:

  • Material introducing the project (target audience: beginner, feature relevance: core/common).

  • A collection of HowsTos, tutorials and quick-start guides (audience: beginner to intermediate, relevance: core/common).

  • Reference manuals for the project’s tools and APIs (audience: intermediate to advanced, relevance: core/common to niche).

  • Developer guides — short guides for using the project’s libraries and APIs (audience: beginner to intermediate, relevance: core/common).

  • Knowledge Base articles. These document fairly niche aspects of the tools (audience: experts, relevance: niche).

  • Answers in community fora (audience: all, relevance: all).

  • A project website (audience: all, relevance: all).