Creating a Doc Spec
Liz Wing · 2015
Technical documentation projects benefit from a good content plan or document specification. The doc spec is a blueprint for a document, and provides a preliminary outline of topics, and estimates the effort to produce the document. This chapter describes the doc spec for a printed software user guide; but it can also be adapted for other types of documentation, including hardware manuals and training guides. To create a customized doc spec, the unique processes, products, timelines, and constraints of an organization has to be taken into account. Doc spec estimates the writer effort to produce the document. First, using a preliminary outline, the length of the document can be estimated. Then, by considering all the variables of the project, a realistic formula for calculating the number of writer hours is selected.