The Question Bank
Learn how to interview SMEs for documentation using this list of example questions.
Your goal as a technical writer is to be a user advocate. You can accomplish this in many ways, but one of the best ways is to ask thorough questions about how a product is installed, configured, disabled, used, and upgraded.
It might seem obvious, but asking these kinds of questions is essential—not only for good documentation, but for good design and quality user workflows. Sometimes engineers are too in the weeds to zoom out and ask the simple usability questions. I’ve even seen instances where they’ve forgotten to “build the bridge” of functionality that allows users to migrate or access a new feature. So, ask away.
Below is a list of questions I’ve found useful. Feel free to take them as your own or fit them into a new list of questions.
Documentation Questions
These questions help you assess what materials are available for you to fully document a feature or request.
Is there a sandbox or UAT environment available for docs/screenshot capture?
Do you have a recorded demo available?
Can I see the tech spec for this new feature?
Are there any ERDs (entity relationship diagrams) for me to look at?
When do you expect this feature to be released?
What phase of development is this in, is it in a documentable state?
Where can I find the design mocks?
Feature Parity Questions
These questions help you map out compatibility between products and features, integrations, workflows, pricing packages, and so on. (My examples in this section may skew FinTech heavy.)
Is this feature going to be GA (generally available) for all supported platforms?
Is this feature supported for all of our checkout workflows (single-step, multi-step)?
Is this feature available to both gateway and payfac customers?
Which product tiers is this feature available for?
Are there any limitations for v1 we should call out?
Enablement & Configuration Questions
These questions clarify the steps required to install/integrate and configure the product or feature. Often, the answer to these questions aren’t nailed down until the tail-end of the development cycle—but they should still be asked ask early and often as possible, as the setup outline is likely to change several times before it is considered optimal.
Is this a 100% self-service feature to enable?
Are there feature flags/switches that need to be enabled on the backend to use this feature?
What are the pre-requisites for enabling this feature?
How is this feature enabled?
Can this feature be customized? If so, how?
Have any new UI fields been introduced to support this feature?
Have any existing UI fields been changed to support this feature?
Have there been any updates to our external APIs to support this feature?
How do you install this plugin?
How do you uninstall and/or disable this plugin?
Are updates pushed automatically or do they have to be done manually?
Are there any customization options available?
Usability Questions
These questions help map out where and how a user interacts with the new product or feature.
Where does a user interact with this feature? (account, dashboard, CLI, API)
Are there any notable limitations to this feature?
How does a user accomplish x using this feature?
What is the target audience or ideal persona that will use this feature?