Right now, our team provides a selection of documentation deliverables to stakeholders. We have quite a list: online help (context sensitive or otherwise), quick-reference guides, animated demos, tutorials, manuals, and so on. In my opinion, documentation is not a once-size-fits-all matter.

However, the idea is to give the stakeholders guidance on what is appropriate for a particular project rather than letting them just pick and choose what they like. For example, as one project was being planned, I met with some of the project leadership and the main stakeholder, and at first the stakeholder wanted the same documentation products that we’d had in another project we did for him. This project was much less extensive and complicated, so I talked him down to something less grand.

Do you have a standard set of deliverables for the products you document (or manage), or do you offer a selection?

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