Time to Regroup

Finding a Common Voice, part 3

The writers met again to continue our harmonization effort for product release notes. 

Unfortunately, we discovered that the year-end timelines for product releases and an imminent retirement interfere with our plans. The workload leaves each writer scrambling just to keep up. Thinking about changing the process at this point is overload.

Since we want to keep on track, we decided to shift focus to the long-term goal, setting aside the interim goal for now.

That decision also fits into the feedback we received from stakeholders. 

Our long-term goal is a common database exposed in the portal UI. This solution is a minimum of 12 months from being completed. 

We were hoping to simplify the information provided in the release notes, but found that the stakeholders want to be able to filter the resolved or known defects based on product component, or keywords.

We also found that the need for filtering the defects affects the format that we provide the release notes in. While most of the release notes are provided in PDF, the most complicated ones are provided in Excel for the filtering capability. The PDF is cleaner and more streamlined, but lacks the necessity to easily find a subset of 300+ defects.

We will decide what information to provide, the filters stakeholders want, and to create a stylesheet.

Once we agree on the details, then we will backtrack to our individual deliverables and see what details we can adopt in the interim. Although the results may not mirror each other, we will at least use a common voice and style.