Written communication is, without a doubt, a more cohesive method of exchanging information about a software product that every team member should be familiar with. This is the reason why product managers devote a significant amount of their time to updating documentation for any job involving software.
Understanding that producing various documentation for numerous procedures helps to keep the whole development process structured, preventing unforeseen difficulties caused by miscommunications, is widely accepted in all industries.
Let's take a look at some of the benefits of documentation for product managers to get a better understanding of how important it really is.
What is the importance of documentation for product managers?
To Develop a Precise Product Vision
Documentation assists product managers in identifying the answers to all of the "whys" that arise in initiatives that revolve around the core product or service. Writing everything down helps product managers in making critical choices and receiving answers to queries such as who is the product created for, and why does the app or product needs to be developed from the beginning. This prevents any possibility of misunderstandings or blunders.
A Significant Assist in the Planning Process
You can't just assume that your product is the greatest answer to the outlying problem; you have to have a strategy for it to be the best solution. Now, before anything else, preparation is essential. By clearly and concisely documenting their vision via the creation of stories, sprints, and objectives, managers enable the whole development team to produce software that is aligned with the demands of the consumers they serve.
Supports Execution on Time
If plans are not carried out on time and in the proper way, they are rendered ineffective. To transform an app concept into a genuine and well-functioning application, a product manager employs documentation and written communication with designers, developers, and other stakeholders to push them in the right direction and execute the well-articulated plans that have been developed.
Teams are held responsible
By maintaining complete documentation of all work associated with a given product, product managers may access a wealth of information about what team members are doing and hold them accountable for their part of the duties. Keeping detailed records of everything helps to keep things simple and straightforward.
Customers' Needs Are Met
Product managers may readily access what features should be included in the application and what tasks each feature must fulfill by documenting everything from the app concept to the planning stage. Later on, they may communicate this evaluation to the team in a precise and understandable manner, ensuring that the final product is exactly what consumers want.
Creating documentation is a key aspect of product management. The following is a list of 10 key documentations that product managers work with in order to maximize the productivity of their team and projects.
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Documentation pertaining to competitive analysis
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Documentation Outlining the Product Strategy and Vision
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Product Requirement Documentation (PRDs)
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OKRs, key performance indicators, and success metrics
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Roadmaps Documentation
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Documentation pertaining to designs and prototypes
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Documentation describing the user's journey and stories
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Documentation describing the release notes and scope
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Internal Guides and Frequently Asked Questions
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Customer-Facing User Guides and Product Documentation
Documentation pertaining to competitive analysis
Conducting competitive analysis research is a huge part of market research which allows you to investigate your product's competitive advantage over your competition who produce the same or similar product.
Competitive analysis includes investigating the goods and services offered by rivals, as well as their market share and strengths and weaknesses. Competitive analysis documentation, which includes all of the above-mentioned factors, is created and sent to the whole development team for review. A product manager will only make a final decision on the design of their application or product after doing comprehensive research on the competition.
The following is an example of how a competitor's table would appear in the competitive analysis documentation:
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The company's name is referred to as the competitor.
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The website address of the competitor
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The number of users, which is (to estimate the effectiveness of its products and services)
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The length of time that a rival has been in the market
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Competitors' specifics and areas of expertise
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The cost of a service or a product
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Notes on various topics
Because product managers do a variety of different sorts of analysis, the contents of the document might vary dramatically from one to the next. Capabilities analysis, Competitive landscape analysis, Competitive differentiation analysis, Imitability Ladder analysis, and Value Proposition analysis are some of the more well-known types.
Documentation Outlining the Product Strategy and Vision
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When it comes to product vision, it is something that creates a picture of the future of the product that we are attempting to develop. In the form of a storyboard, a narrative, or a prototype, it is intended to entice teams, investors, and partners to invest in and support the product in some way.
It is the sequence of goods that are intended to be generated until the ultimate product is attained that defines product strategy.
One of the most important abilities of effective product managers is the ability to develop a product vision, yet this is just the beginning. They must also build an enticing product strategy in order to convey a clear viewpoint on the product to the audience. Both the product vision and the product strategy must be highly purposeful in order for them to succeed. Consequently, documentations are prepared to capture all of the information connected to determining what the final product will be and how to bring a concept into reality. The majority of the time, these materials are shared with stakeholders in order to solicit their comments and their opinions.
Product Requirement Documentation (PRDs)
Product Requirement Documentation are all-in-one documentation that brings together the many aspects of an application in a single location. Specs documentation is the most popular sort of document, and they provide a description of the applications' characteristics, among other things. They are also known as specification documents.
It is possible that each PRD will be different from the others. These documentations lay out the research issue statements, success metrics, MVP feature list, technical implementation details, and so on for the research project.
Product requirements documents (PRDs) include every step in the entire picture of the product, as well as the decision on whether to include or remove particular features, and they indicate any possible difficulties. Product managers may use this document to visualize the amount of time necessary for project development processes, comprehend the amount of money required for project development processes, and establish a mutually complete understanding between customers and the development team.
I have stated the importance of PRD’s in another article. To learn more click here.
Objectives and key results, key performance indicators, and success metrics documentation
Objective and Key Results is a mechanism used by product managers to determine the goals of a product development process and then access the outcomes of that process as it continues. The aim directs the team towards the goals, while the outcomes indicate whether or not the goals have been attained. Two questions are asked and answered throughout the process: "Where do you wish to go?" and "Have you arrived or have you failed to arrive" at a specific goal or product objective.
However, a key performance indicator, or KPI for short, measures the overall success of a development process at its current stage of development. Customer Lifetime Value and Trial-to-Customer Conversion Rate in sales, Web traffic and Conversion Rate in marketing, to name a few examples of key performance indicators (KPIs). All of these objectives, as well as the outcomes obtained throughout the process, are detailed in the relevant documentation.
Roadmaps Documentation
Roadmaps are one of the most important documentation that product managers are supposed to formulate. A roadmap serves as a means of communicating to the team the significance of the product.
A product manager creates a product life cycle that outlines what needs to be done when it needs to be done and how the whole process will be carried out. A roadmap is a document that contains a list of all of the initiatives that have been undertaken in order to effectively build software or any other product. It is a route that product managers have laid out and that the whole team follows. These may be prepared on Docsie to submit to their employees with embedded PowerPoint presentations within the documentation created by Google Slides. Docsie allows integration with Google slides through our integration capabilities. To learn more about Docsie's integration capabilities click here.
Documentation pertaining to designs and prototypes
Creating something from scratch without a blueprint is quite difficult. This is also true in the case of product design. Although the basic concept is important, there are hundreds of variants that might occur during the development process. As a result, product managers must maintain a document that has a record of all of the modifications and revisions that have been made to the product's design.
When it comes to product prototyping, product managers have a very different experience than engineers or designers. Product managers set the tone for prototyping by setting clear goals and laying out a roadmap for the team to follow.
If you are wondering why a product manager would need to produce an app prototype documentation, then consider the following benefits of doing so:
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The potential of misunderstanding is completely eliminated.
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Iterations are completed quickly
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Early in the process, it is important to provide justification for the notions
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Improvements in the quality of technical feedback
For this reason and more prototyping documentation is essential.
Documentation describing the user's journey and stories
In the development of any application or platform, user stories and customer journey maps are two critical tools that must be used in conjunction with one another. Product managers develop and maintain documentation for these two positions in order to ensure that every detail is recorded and kept safe and secure.
When creating a user narrative document, it is important to think about the many reasons why a user would want to utilize a certain product. Product managers record every conceivable trigger that might lead to a user interacting with a feature of the platform, including bugs and feature requests. A user journey might be considered on a microscopic level in this case.
In contrast, the user journey is a document that maps out the whole user experience, from the point of purchase or download to the point of usage of the product's features. This assists product managers in further explaining the product to their team and other interested parties (stakeholders, for example), as well as in establishing their confidence in the product itself. Also, this information can be used as marketing resources for ad campaigns or to explain the use case of a product to potential clients.
Documentation describing the release notes and scope
Release Notes, as the name implies, are the documentations that are sent in conjunction with the release of new platforms or SaaS products. In order to notify users about new standards, identify which issues have been solved, and market the application when the update is complete, product managers put together this documentation. Because SaaS products differ widely from one another, no two documentation are exactly the same.
Scope notes are sometimes referred to as Scope of work documents in certain circles. Managers use this tool to define the breadth of the features that an application or a piece of software contains. What those characteristics will make possible, and so forth.
Internal Guides and Frequently Asked Questions
It is necessary to produce confidential internal FAQs for stakeholders in order to keep them informed throughout the whole product development process. The way in which these FAQs are written is really straightforward. The wireframes of a product with a strong user experience component, or a link to divide wireframe documentation, may be found in this folder.
All of the information about how things function in the development process is included inside these internal manuals. In addition to ensuring that data is recorded in such a way as to permit smooth hand-off among members, it also serves as a reference for external-facing jobs such as sales, marketing, customer support, and other similar positions to help customers.
Customer-Facing User Guides and Product Documentation
For the uninitiated, the customer-facing guide is a user manual document in the traditional sense. It is the responsibility of product managers to prepare this documentation, which will provide instructions on how to utilize the newly built SaaS product.
Users may find themselves in a state of confusion as to how to run the product if this is not done, at least in the beginning stages, until they figure out the flow on their own. Consequently, it should be quite obvious why this document is so significant that it is one of the most often used or developed documentation by product managers in the industry.
Click here to learn how Docsie can help you create your first User guide/ Manual.
Conclusions:
Briefly stated, the following documentations are the top ten documents that competent product managers rely on in order to ensure an efficient product management process is followed.
Due to these documentations, it is impossible for them to have any misunderstandings or disputes since they have separated the information about the duties into several papers. It produces a highly structured and seamless development process that has been meticulously documented at every stage.
How Docsie can help to create all these documentations?
Docsie is a robust platform that is product managers' best friend when it comes to documentation. Docsie specializes in creating, managing, publishing documentation that can be translated into various languages with a sophisticated versioning system, easy-to-use editor and various other amazing features which help product managers create robust and dynamic online documentation.