maintaing a list of changes in User Guides between versions.

[Beth Agnew]

Why do they need to keep track of these changes? It's additional 
overhead to you in terms of your time and resources, do you really want 
to be doing that? It sounds like because they track changes in the 
product they think you should do it too. I have been asked to keep such 
a log before. I smile and say, "We don't do that." Are you going to 
track changes every time you do a spell check, fix some typos -- 2 Feb 
corrected 27 typos, or rework a sentence. No. (Gosh, at least I hope 
not!) So then you have to develop specifications of what you'll track 
and what you won't bother with. Track reworking a paragraph? No. Track 
moving chapters around? Track swapping in new graphics? It can be 
nightmare to have to account for all that.

If they want to know if you've documented features X, Y and Z in this 
new version, it's easy enough to find in the publication itself. If it's 
changed in the product, they can assume it's changed in the 
documentation. Of course, if something is missed that's not a problem 
tracking changes will help. Somewhere you'll probably have notes about 
what you were asked to do in the new version. With that, the developers 
readme that lists product changes, and the previous and current versions 
of the documentation, that should be sufficient. Use a version control 
system if you want to have a finer grained handle on what details 
changed version to version, including typos.

When people don't understand what we do as techwriters, they often ask 
for things that work for other roles but not for ours. Just say no. :-)
--Beth

Caroline Tabach wrote:
> Someone asked us if there is any way that we keep track of changes
> that are made in our user guides/helps from version to version.
>
> Is this something that people do?
>
> Since books are changed as a result of software releases, we know more
> or less what has been done, but there is no list of changes (or
> history file)
>
> Is this a requirement in some sections of the communications industry?
>