3 ms·

This is similar to Amazon's "working backwards" based product development. Before writing the manual, they do another important writing - press release. It's am

by wanghq 8y ago

This is similar to Amazon's "working backwards" based product development. Before writing the manual, they do another important writing - press release. It's amazing to see they talked about this idea a decade ago and still use the same approach to drive the development today. https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backwards.html https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2006/11/working_backwar...

amelius 8y ago
Yes, I suppose this is similar to how copying an existing product is always easier than coming up with a new product. After the point where you have the user's manual, you're basically copying an existing product.
mafro 8y ago
The writing of user manuals before development sounds an awful lot like waterfall :)
- Crespyl 8y ago
  It's really not a bad way to build something when you already know for certain exactly what you need to build.
  - ljw1001 8y ago
    It could be a good way to build something when you don't know what you're building. Writing a user manual is cheaper than coding, but may force you to get pretty explicit about what the user experience will be like.
  - kchr 8y ago
    And, maybe even more important; why you created it.
- hawkice 8y ago
  User manuals are (ideally) not technical documents. It shouldn't imply any specific system design if it doesn't have to.
- kchr 8y ago
  Agreed. But a README does not have to be an entire manual; you could start with describing the program and your intentions with it, a long with basic operations. :-)