How should I document a product release with an inherently flawed design?
The deadline is looming and someone realizes the product can't be shipped without documentation. Once the product leaves the remit of the software engineers (who obviously only ever write wonderful code) and is passed on to a more objective audience an obvious design flaw is discovered. May be the password is being sent using GET, maybe the so-called REST API is inherently stateful, maybe there is just some kludge which makes loading the data very painful.
Anyway, there is no capacity to change the code to fix the flaw before the deadline. Something must be shipped and documented as-is. The engineering team will have to fix it with a patch in the next version.
What is an effective strategy for documenting such a product? Should the design flaws be highlighted or ignored?
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2 answers
Absolutely document them and point them out to management.
As Mark says, this is a business problem. As a coder myself with forty years of commercial experience, your problem is that almost any flaw can be exploited to the detriment and possible losses of your clients, such a password sent using GET.
Despite license agreements that disclaim any and all responsibility for such losses, lawsuits can still happen and may cost a fortune to defend and/or settle, and even worse, publicity if such a thing happens and it is clear your company knew of it can be devastating to your company's reputation, reliability, and sales. If your company cannot be trusted, and you have any competitors at all, they will exploit such a flaw mercilessly.
Write your documentation; you can describe the flaw without calling it a flaw or mistake, it is just the way the product is done. Arrange it so management can excise it quickly if they don't want to let people know; that is their job, and not every design flaw is exploitable, as you note some are just stupidly and unnecessarily clumsy. (A good example of that is a phone system that requires the caller to identify themselves more than once, or enter an account number more than once.)
Write it up; as an addendum or final word on a feature, or whatever. Keep your copy of the documentation with that write up. Show it to your supervisor for a final decision, along with some form of the reasoning above. They can kick it upstairs or tell you to kill it, that is a business decision they have been tasked with making. Do not presume it is your role to make it for them; it lets them (rightfully) blame you for any fallout.
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This is essentially a business problem, which is not to say it is off topic, because technical writers exist to solve business problems. But it is not a problem the writer should try to solve on their own. You have to get guidance from the product manager.
However, there is a very good chance that the product manager has not thought this through, so you may have to go to them an lay out a set of options and their potential consequences:
Document the flaws clearly. Likely consequences: limited adoption. Upsides: avoid disappointing or misleading customers. Hopefully keep them interested in what you are doing for the next release.
Don't mention the flaws at all. Likely consequences: higher initial adoption followed by disappointment and possibly lawsuits when the flaws become apparent. You may turn customers off long term and not have the chance to win them back once the fixed version is released. Alternatively, you may survive the initial disappointment and ride the first mover advantage to a home run with the second release.
Document around the flaws. That is, write up procedures that work around the design flaws. Likely consequences: The product may appear weirdly designed or over complicated on first release, which may not matter if it has unique functionality that people want. Second version can then be sold as a significant upgrade with improved ease of use. However, the time to develop, test, and document the workarounds could delay the release.
Option three is way more common than most people may suspect.
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