Technical writing/Requirements analysis

back to Introduction to Technical Writing

This is a working page for the task of the Fred's TW training course.

Scope of possible requirements (something to begin with):
 * Content of the training wiki page:
 * Must contain only topics related to TW
 * Level of TW (for wide audience, for beginners, or for advanced technical writers)
 * Level of details (how deep, how much, what to put and what to link to)
 * Structure (levels of headings, subheadings, TOC)
 * How to organize pages (by theme), size of one page
 * Discussion page (what to write there, how)
 * Links to other sites:
 * To what sites, how to organize, how to describe
 * Images:
 * Size, location, format, name conventions
 * Access and availability:
 * Training wiki must be available to everybody at any time
 * Access rights (who can write, who can edit, how)
 * How to enter changes (log in, check in, lock, etc.)
 * Language issues
 * International audience (native and non-native speakers), no jargon, British (?) English, simple words, etc.
 * Which style guide to use
 * Formating conventions
 * What must be bold, italics, etc.

TWFred 06:09, 31 July 2007 (UTC)This is a good start. Looks like we've got some groupings of requirements. So far the groupings seem to be:

Users of the Product
The course is intended for the people who are interested in TW, mostly for those who want to become a technical writer (or at least think about it) and for technical writers who want to improve their skills. It can be also useful for people whose job is related to TW (project managers who deal with documentation, technical translators, business analyst in IT companies and others).
 * 

The main goal of our persona is to find out if TW is a wise career and if so, to learn how to become a technical writer and to gain basic TW knowledge and skills.
 * 

The user of the TW wiki do these tasks:
 * 
 * reading
 * following links to read more
 * performing assignments
 * participating in online critiques and updates of posted work
 * communicating with the instructor (if any)
 * posting/printing/saving completed work as a portfolio

Our persona (Joe) is an expert in English. He is not a technical guru.
 * 

Joe is very talkative and friendly (he's an English conversation teacher after all). What about PMs, and Bus. Analysts (BAs)?
 * 

same issue
 * 

same issue
 * 


 * 


 * 

The main persona (Joe) wants to investigate changing careers. Other users (PMs, TWs, and BAs) want to enhance existing careers.
 * 

Other Comments
So now we can arrange the requirements under these headings and start assigning them UniqueIDs. (For example, "LC-010" or "SF-020".)

I suggest another one..."Content". What topics are appropriate to this course, and which are not. For example, this isn't the place to describe every issue in English grammar, nor is it an ESL course. But some of this stuff should be put in...which bits? Similarly, how much detail should be include about using various tools? Is an introduction to XML appropriate in this course, or should we just link to other XML learning resources?

Bart says: >> Similarly, how much detail should be include about using various tools? Is an introduction to XML appropriate in this course, or should we just link to other XML learning resources? Think about your persona :)