Product release notes - why do they matter

Everyone involved in pre or post-production is writing product release notes: developers, QA and Support. In the end release notes for all products appear consistent and are published following carefully constructed set of internal writing standards. Here's an autopilot plan listing release notes creation process in top-down priority by owners


Support

You are the direct owners of product release notes; they serve as proactive help and guidance for our customers by letting everyone know what we improved, changed and fixed in the new product releases. Having good release notes has multiple benefits:
   a) Satisfied existing customers
   b) More new customers
   c) Less need for later reactive support

This means that you have the final and ultimate responsibility to polish the release notes for all products before the release, make them consistent and easy to understand for all and push to production. To do so, use all the help you can from other teams (QA, developers) to clarify required technical details and rewrite the release notes as needed

Release notes standards are there to make all release notes consistent, not to create more bureaucratic overhead; if you see a way to improve it by making release notes simpler and easier for customers to understand - act on it now


QA

You write the most of the release notes from scratch as soon as Bugs are reported which basically makes you the main authors of 90% of all our release notes. Writing good release notes has multiple benefits:
   a) Release note text can also be directly used as Bug title - two flies with one swat
   b) Bug title matching well written release note will make developers understand bugs more easily and will pull on your sleeve less often
   c) Save time for Support which in turn allows them to resolve more reactive support issues, to forward less issues to you and thus save your own time


Developers

You are the first and the last line of defense - you consolidate all release notes for a new product release into one file on start and incorporate them back into product after Support team reviews them

Yes, you still have to write all enhancements and changes as no one else knows what has improved and changed in the product better than you. Additionally you have the responsibility to incorporate final release notes back into your product and to make sure formatting is consistent across all products

As Everyone Serves, your main job is to provide prompt technical assistance to other teams when they need to write a good and simple release note


Common suggestions

   1) When in doubt how to write a release note just put yourself in customer's shoes and see if an outsider will understand it after a single read
   2) Make all release notes as concise as possible - they are not help content but new product version proactive one-sentence guidelines
   3) Describe anything and everything that has changed and especially improved in new product releases, even if you accidentally improved performance by a few percent
   4) If not sure how to write a release note contact other teams for assistance - don't write a poor and inconclusive release note as it will eventually come back to you