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Process for collecting feedback post-release (new article in API doc course)

by Tom Johnson on Nov 16, 2020
categories: writing api-doc-site-updates

I added a new article covering the process for collecting and addressing feedback post-release in my API doc course. Collecting feedback post-release involves a host of new challenges and processes, such as how to optimize your feedback form, how to account for random externally driven requests across your dev portal, how to process the feedback from incoming requests, and so on.

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.

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

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, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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