Task: Develop User Documentation

User documentation might include all or parts of user manuals (electronic or paper-based), tutorials, frequently asked questions (FAQs), on-line Help Files, installation instructions, operational procedures, etc. User documentation often is used as the basis for training materials - if the documentation is of poor quality, the training materials might not be any better.

Without good user documentation, a system might be well developed by a development team but might not meet the End User's expectations because they will not be able operate the application effectively.

Determine user documentation contents

User documentation often consists of a wide variety of content such as:

User manuals (electronic or paper-based)
Tutorials
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
On-line Help Files
Installation and configuration instructions
Operational procedures (or job aids)

For your product and for this release, determine which of these types of user documentation your team will develop and deliver.

Leverage product documentation

Re-use whatever material you can from the product documentation that your team has created. If adequate time and attention was given to product documentation, you should be able to leverage a significant amount of it to develop the user documentation. Because only features (and possibly some nonfunctional requirements) were documented for the product, only that amount can be leveraged. However, it often provides a nice framework for the user documentation.

Leverage other materials

Other materials developed in the course of the Release might provide excellent input into the user documentation such as:

User Stories
Test Cases
Storyboards
Test Scenarios
Architecture Notebook
Previously developed training materials

Each of these may contain content that you do not need to re-create. Use your imagination to find other source materials that can help your team document the system for end users.

Write user documentation content

Based on the previous steps, write the user documentation. One way to do this is to assign sections of the document (described in the step "Determine User Documentation Contents" above) to Development team members as Sprint/Iteration Tasks in the Release Sprint/Iteration.

Perform quality review

As the user documentation is integrated, plan and conduct a quality review during the Release Sprint/Iteration to ensure that the documentation is of sufficient quantity and quality. Update and improve the user documentation based on the results of the quality review.

Deliver user documentation

Before or at the end of a release, deliver the completed user documentation to the deployment manager. Ensure that the program has a plan for communicating the user documentation to end users.