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Show HN: A set of standard document templates

433 points by kostarelo ↗ HN
A collection of common templates and documents I have been using over the years. I am tired of trying to google them every time I need them, so I just gathered them all here.

I would love to hear yours and add them to the list.

The list:

- Pitch

- Vision

- Strategy

- Product Requirements

- Technical Design

- Product Opportunity Assessment

- Product Vision

- Run Book

https://github.com/kbariotis/templates

36 comments

[ 828 ms ] story [ 2679 ms ] thread
acidburnNSA
I particularly like the links to the basis of each template in the various sections.
madc
This could grow into an awesome-document-templates list..
kostarelo
Indeed and I would love to see what people have been using.
blondin
i actually wrote that down as side project idea yesterday! glad to see someone doing it.

i have a different set of documents in mind though. my list is more developer oriented. here's the kind i wanted:

- project readme (from simple to very involved)

- pull requests

- open source licenses (i think GitHub does this right?)

- code of conduct

- code testing template

- benchmarks

i also bookmarked these links:

https://embeddedartistry.com/templates

https://www.sans.org/security-resources/policies (this one is an old one i had not sure how i even stumble upon it...)

kostarelo
Thank you, I can totally see them fit in this repo. If you have specific content for any of these, please feel free to file a PR. :)
samstave
For whatever reason, my brain immediately pictured the Code of Conduct written in BASIC:

    10 RESPECT OTHERS
    20 BE CIVIL
    20 RESPECT COMPANY POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
    30 GOTO 10
anotheryou
Much of it would work as a nested list. (org-mode user here :))
Hackbraten
Expected Word documents. Relieved when I saw it’s Markdown.

HN will be HN. Thank you for that!

ozofsound
>I am tired of trying to google them every time I need them

This is cool, but how many times in ones life does one need these?

kostarelo
Yeah definitely not every week, but it's nice to have a single reference to go to the moment that you need them.
0xff00ffee
You know, this is a great idea. I've been writing slide decks since the late 80's and having a template to think about the problem first is really useful. Can't believe this never occurred to me. Thanks! I just pulled down your tech_design template and I'm going to use it this week.

[Abe Simpson Story: in the 80s/90s "Slide Decks" were called "Foils" because they were printed (by the print center) on transparencies and shown on overhead projectors.]

chrisseaton
> were called "Foils" because they were printed (by the print center) on transparencies and shown on overhead projectors.

How does that explain them being called ‘foils’? I think you missed some part of the explanation?

frant-hartm
Because the slides are made from foil? Or at least they look like the are?
chrisseaton
Made from foil? As in metal foil? But metal isn’t transparent.
0xff00ffee
I'm sitting here with a blank look on my face because I realize: I have no idea WHY, it's just a term we all recited without questioning. I'm somewhat disturbed by this discovery.

This will be my new research project.

oth001
Thank you for putting this together. I'm wondering if you were to use these, what the order of operations for a product would be? Maybe Product Opportunity Assessment > Product Vision > Product Requirements?
nicwest
- Post-mortem

- Incident report

- Scheduled down time

cameronshorter
Hi Kostas, Great idea to pull this together. A bunch of us tech writers have had a similar idea, and have banded together to create the key standard templates for tech projects - focusing initially on the core open-source documents required. Still early days for us, but we have put an alpha 0.1 release out. Are you, or anyone else reading, interested in getting involved.

https://thegooddocsproject.dev/

If interested, you can reach me at cameron D O T shorter AT gm ail . com