Re: Has anyone ever written the user guide before the product wasdeveloped (coded)?

[Abigail Samuel <writerabby -at- gmail -dot- com>]

As the information developer on a team that follows the Agile methodology, I
start writing the documentation based on the product, component or feature's
design, which usually parallels the writing of the code by the developer.
The benefit that I see in this arrangement is that the information developer
is involved in the development right from the beginning, and has the
opportunity to provide valuable inputs right at the design stage, which may
result in enhancing the product itself. My document needs to be ready when
the developer demos the code to the stakeholders at the end of a sprint or
iteration. Also, the team testing the code, use the document while testing,
and hence I get inputs from them which otherwise is very difficult to obtain
during documentation reviews.

Regards,
Abigail

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 6:53 AM, Richard L Hamilton <dick -at- rlhamilton -dot- net>wrote:

> I highly recommend the practice if you're writing the code yourself.
>
> One of the best programmers I ever worked with would write detailed
> documentation before he wrote any code, but he was an exception (he was
> a darned good writer, too:).
>
> Dick Hamilton
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