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Subject:Re: What type of document is this? From:Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> To:Sean McKean <Sean -dot- McKean -at- fineos -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:11:44 -0800
You're kidding: 50 pages of features and post-sales bumf but no actual
how-to information? How big are the pages? 4 x 6 cards?
I like Monique's suggestions from MSTP to call it an idea book, but
then there should be a link to how-to information somewhere. Your
description makes it sound like a feature list, but I can't see how
any feature list could span 50 pages.
In cases like these, a solid focus on what the documentation helps the
user to do should direct what you call it. Likewise, what you call the
document should describe the content that fits into it.
For instance, at a previous company, we used to publish Product Data
Sheets that could span 30 pages. Marketing also needed a shorter
version (approximately 4 pages), so those became "Short Form Data
Sheets", then "Product Briefs".
-Tony
On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 4:29 AM, Sean McKean <Sean -dot- McKean -at- fineos -dot- com> wrote:
> Can anyone tell me what type of document this is? We're looking to see if there's an industry-standard term that we should be using.
>
> It's a 50-page document that explains what the software does. It lists the features and briefly describes what users can do on each screen. There are no procedures in it though - we have a much longer user's guide for that. It's a post-release document, and it'll be used as a definitive list of what the product contains. We're producing two versions: a 'product' version containing the UI features, and a 'technical' version.
>
> Any ideas?
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