Life Cycle of a Software Development Project9
1.
Technical documentation developed during the development process. This includes
architecture, functional and design documents.
2.
Technical documentation prepared for technical support staff. This includes technical
manuals that support staff use to provide customer support.
3.
End-user manuals and guides. This is the documentation for the end user to assist the
user getting started with the product and using it.
All three types of documents are necessary for different aspects of product support. Tech-
nical documents are necessary for future development, bug fixes, and adding new features. Tech-
nical documentation for technical support staff contains information that is too complicated for
the end user to understand and use. The support staff needs this information in addition to user
manuals to better support customers. Finally each product must contain user manuals.
Technical writers usually develop user manuals which are based on functional specifica-
tions. In the timelines of most software development projects, functional specifications are pre-
pared before code development starts. So the technical writers can start writing user manuals
while developers are writing code. By the time the product is ready, most of the work on user
manuals has already been completed.
1.1.8Support and New Features
Your customers need support when you start selling a product. This is true regardless of
the size of the product, and even for products that are not software related. Most common sup-
port requests from customers are related to one of the following:
•The customer needs help in installation and getting started.
•The customer finds a bug and you need to release a patch or update to the whole
product.
•The product does not fulfill customer requirements and a new feature is required by the
customer.
In addition to that, you may also want to add new features to the product for the next
release because competitor products have other features. Better support will increase your cus-
tomer loyalty and will create referral business for you.
You may adopt two strategies to add new features. You may provide an upgrade to the cur-
rent release as a patch, or wait until you have compiled and developed a list of new features and
make a new version. Both of these strategies are useful depending how urgent the requirement
for new features is.