Roles and Activities > Additional Role Set > Technical Writer > Develop Support Materials

Purpose
  • To develop the end-user support material.
Input Artifacts: Resulting Artifacts:
Frequency: In each iteration.
Role: Technical Writer

Workflow Details:

Writing good end-user materials involves the following practices:

  • Organize information for ease of access.
  • Write instructions in such a way that they are easy to follow.
  • Structure the information so that it is easy to skim, yet provide sufficient information for novices.
  • Clearly differentiate between types of information, such as concepts, background, purpose, feedback, and actions.
  • Support you text with graphics to clarify concepts and instructions. This also helps reduce the number of words needed.
  • Explanations should be supported by examples to help users apply new information to their context.

End-user support materials today are for most professionally designed products produced as applications on their own, such as help systems or web sites. Producing such an application is often a project in its own right, and needs to follow the following steps in each iteration of the lifecycle [HAC97]:

  • Produce a high level plan for the information that is to be presented.
  • Specify the contents in detail.
  • Implement the information contents.
  • Test and produce the materials.
  • Evaluate.
 

Copyright  © 1987 - 2001 Rational Software Corporation

Display Rational Unified Process using frames

Rational Unified Process