The MDN community sometimes is tasked with large documentation projects—that is, large amounts of documentation to be written or edited about a specific topic, or a large maintenance project to existing content. In order to be properly prepared to work on these projects, we first create a documentation plan which outlines:
- What the project is
- Why the project needs to be done
- How urgent the project is
- What needs to be done to achieve the desired result
- User stories: examples of use cases for the project's output
- Prerequisites or requirements
- Who will work on the project
- Any notes with implementation suggestions and ideas.
These plans are used through the process of planning and scheduling the work on the project, as well as to help prioritize the project as compared to other proposed projects.
It's important to keep in mind that these documentation project plans are proposals. Not all of them will be done at all, and there's no guarantee as to when those that are done will begin.
Once a project has been accepted, assigned to writers, and begun, the plan document is used to generate a doc status page for the project, and research and writing begins.
To learn more about ongoing documentation projects, see the doc status overview.