Process for collecting feedback post-release (new article in API doc course)
When you’re working on documentation prior to release, you have the full attention of the product team for reviewing and approving the docs. You have a group of product managers, engineers, and others at your present disposal. But when you receive feedback on docs post-release, that same group of people might no longer be present, or they might be hard to locate, especially if you’re updating docs you didn’t work on. You might have to assess feedback on products you know next to nothing about and reach out to people you’ve never interacted with before.
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You also have the challenge of sifting through feedback from people who might not even be your target audience. The feedback might be from customers rather than developers, for example. Or the feedback might be from people looking for a support lifeline when other channels fail them. Or it might just be spam.
Finally, there’s no built-in bandwidth to handle tasks like this, so you’ll likely have to deal with these random requests on top of a full project load. Because of all these factors, handling feedback post-release presents many new challenges.
Read more here: Processes for collecting feedback post-release.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, agent skills, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my AI courses for more on the latest in AI and tech comm. If you're looking for info about documenting APIs, see my API documentation course.
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