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I need some help! What do you document when working in a software team?

by FrancescoL

Hey everyone,

If you work in a software product team (as a dev of any kind, Product Manager, designer, business analyst, support, ect) then I could really use your help. It would help us a loooott if you could tell me what types of documents you usually write and just some dot points of what content would go in them. e.g.

User interview document

  • Goals and hypothesis
    • What you think is going to happen
    • How many people to interview
    • What are their personas
    • length of interview
    • High level - what they are being asked
      ect..

--Backstory (optional)--
After quite a few user interviews we seem to have settled on scaling and maintaining a wiki being a real pain point for a lot of software teams in companies larger than 10. Our approach to fixing this involves many things, but a core element is to be an opinionated tool that offers soft-templates (a template that suggests what to do but doesn't actually force you).

We think it's possible to come up with a template for 95% of what a software team will usually ever write, and these will be very prescriptive. Problem is to develop these templates we need access to a lot of internal wikis which no one is willing to give us. So the next best thing is to have people from every profession list out what they document, and from that make our best guess at an initial set of templates. From there it would just be a matter of releasing it, people telling us they suck, and iterating.

Thanks in advance for the help!

FrancescoL's avatarFrancescoL
on November 28, 2019
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  1. 2

    This might be helpful: https://usefyi.com/product-documents/

    For me in my startup, I'm running a private WordPress installation because the important things for me were:

    • truly offline mobile app
    • add by email
    • own the data to do as I please with it in the future.
    • ability to apply multiple tags to a doc/post if it covers multiple areas.
    • cheap since I'm bootstrapping.

    What do I post there?

    • Competition.
    • Links to resources, like the UseFYI link.
    • How decisions are made and what research or alternatives considered.
    • Sprint meetings (I'm a 1-man-show right now)
    • I have a template I complete and every month it's auto-emailed to stakeholders (advisory board).

    Hope that helps,

    Lakebed_io's avatar Lakebed_io
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    7 years ago
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    1. 2

      Thanks that helps a lot! Why is the mobile app important to you? What information do you find yourself looking up in the app?

      FrancescoL's avatar FrancescoL
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      7 years ago
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      1. 1

        Originally my thought around the mobile app is that I have a Windows tablet without internet and wanted to be able to use it while on transit. I'm currently unable to work so that has changed and I do not use the mobile app much.
        What I use the most now is actually the post by email function. I have a Gmail extension that will share the URL and copied text via email. So, when I come across potential competition, examples of good UI, etc. it's really quick/easy to add that to an email to post the intranet.

        Based on what I know of your idea, I think you can definitely get away without a mobile app. It sounds to me like the vast majority of use will be desktop/laptop.

        What I look up and use most within the WordPress installation are:
        1.) The monthly stakeholder update because I slowly add to it throughout the month.
        2.) My sprint planning & retrospective doc to confirm what I have committed to and to update it.
        3.) My "code standards" for consistent code.

        Lakebed_io's avatar Lakebed_io
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        7 years ago
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