v5.0.3: My Experience with Writing Release Notes
May 30th, 2007 by Gopal
Currently I am preparing final draft for the vtiger CRM 5.0.3 release notes. This time I am trying to make it more lucid and end-user friendly, so that our community will get a better visibility on our product and take a quick decision on vtiger.
I would like to share some of my personal experiences during this exercise.
Boilerplate for standard content:
- I have a boilerplate for writing release notes. Place holders for there for filling the data.
- Once data starts coming in, I update the respective section. It is easy to fill introduction, downloads, upgrade instructions, since there will not be much changes from release to release.
Filling the Fixed Issues/Known Issues sections:
- When we have releases often, it is easy to update the latest 10 to 20 issues in a short duration.
- If the release happens after a long duration, (in v5.0.3 we have crossed 1000 mark and last release happened almost 7 months back), it is very hard to segregate issues into small chunks.
- Segregation of issues in to small chunks requires a lot of time than expected.
- Identifying issues that have much impact on users, testing those issues in the latest build, etc.. This process is one of the major tasks in preparation of the release notes.
- Once it is clear, start real-time testing in the latest build. If there are any confusion don’t hesitate to contact concerned tester/developer.
- Keeping end-user perspective is another important area. Particularly, when releasing end-user products, it is very essential to keep the message short and lucid, since end-users will have limited time to take a decision on using the product.
- Any wrong information published will have much impact on team reputation. Hence very careful, while presenting the information.
Learning:
- It is always better to start release notes from DAY ONE of the active development than giving it an after thought. I am not sure how many writers follow this rule.
- Have a continuous coordination between testers & developers to understand the nature of the issue and impact on end-user experience. Otherwise, release notes will send wrong signals to your target audience.
Finally, we will have a printer friendly (PDF) release notes for v5.0.3, which will be published during release. All our past release notes are archived at:
http://wiki.vtiger.com/index.php/Release_Notes
Cheers,
Gopal
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Cool, have luck writing them but please shoot me with the product release once and for all.
I´m sorry if I´m not being polite but my boss hands are squeezzing me by (well, you can imagine where), I can´t deliver more excuses or the project will be given to other CRM. So ppplllleeeease.
Keep up the good work guys. Release it when it’s done, don’t worry about people going insane for their fix, they’ll get over it once you release a polished product. Nice job with everything, I can’t wait to see the final release.
I saw the release note draft as it has been posted at the SVN. Perhaps you can include more links to existing documentations (installation maual, wiki etc.). Beginners tend to ask the same questions over and over again and it might be a good idea to give them links to the basic documents with the relase notes.
Looking great —
Just one request: Every commercial crm calls it ‘Opportunities’ instead of ‘Potentials’ - anyway you change this?