• How do I restart a program if necessary?
• When should I restart a particular program?
• Under what status conditions do I need to alert management?
• Are there other tasks I need to perform?
Installers and systems administrators will be more concerned that a
program is capable of peaceful coexistence. You will need to describe
known conflicts between your applications and any others which
will need to share resources with them, and preferably provide
workarounds or (better) solutions. You will also need to detail system
requirements and (if possible) expected resource usage.
You may also need to create detailed instructions which specify how
to install the software, how to check that it has been installed correctly,
how to configure it according to the resources allocated to it and the
demands expected of it, and which also explain how future upgrades
can be applied.
It may be that your application is going to be called from other pro-
grams. If so, you need to think about the application programmer’s
interface. Developers planning to use the functionality provided by
your software will need to know in detail, and preferably with exam-
ples, how to extract the most value from it.
This documentation should answer at least the most basic program-
mer’s questions about a new piece of software:
• How do I pass input to it?
• How do I receive output from it?
• How do I access exposed functionality?
• Where can I find out more?
It may also be appropriate for your documentation to cover Fre-
quently Asked Questions, give details of online help and support that
will be provided, or direct users to a helpdesk facility.
In the latter case, you may need to provide helpdesk staff with access
to special information about planned enhancements and known bugs
that are being addressed.
Finally, you may need to consider a less technical overview of the
program for an audience that may be more focused on markets, sales,
finance, or strategy. I’ve heard it suggested that for this type of docu-
mentation you should use crayons.
92 WRITING THE FRIENDLY MANUAL