I think I’m all documented out.

Last week and the week before I was mainly working on a Functional Specification (how each page/section works, as well as how it all fits together) for a website, which has come in at almost 7 thousand words, as well as a Component Specification (explains how each component should be set out, as well as text/background colours etc.) which is only sitting at 756, altohugh, I’m still working on that as I do the design.

Documentation is important so we can keep a log of how everything should work, but I’m starting to wonder if we are approaching it in the right way. It’s difficult for people to grasp how something works from dry text, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time explaining things as well, but then maybe that’s just because I need to work on the way I write. Initially I’d used a lot of bullet points to try and make it clearer, but I think this is actually more confusing because it’s more difficult to understand the context. I added simple wireframes, which definitely helps, but this should also perhaps been taken to further detail. Yes! More diagrams! That will be fun…um…

Anyway, keeping documentation up to date can also be troublesome, it’s easy to get distracted with other things. However, as the project goes on it’s best to keep an accurate document on the website, that way we always have something to fall back on, and to check, especially if the client wants to make further changes.

Well, I’m reaching the end of the documentation stage for me (hopefully), so it’s back to the pretty pictures. Excellent.