LSST Data Management uses a number of technical communication and documentation platforms to address our needs, with the SQuaRE team often leading the management (and development, when necessary) of these platforms. Each platform addresses a specific niche of audience (DM, Project or our science community), synchronicity (real-time, asynchronous, or broadcast), and task (e.g., work ticketing, documenting designs, manuals).
This technical note outlines the platforms that DM uses to communicate and document our work. It also describes new platforms we are building to improve communications and documentation, and how these platforms might roll into LSST operations.
In particular, this document introduces an information architecture where two platforms—this Community forum, and an up-coming DocHub documentation index—are designated as information entry points that can be used by DM internally and the science community at large. This architecture will solve the oft-cited problem of information discovery given the fact that information naturally lives on different platforms given context.
We welcome your thoughts and feedback on this technote and the overall DM communications strategy in this thread.
The following are slides that accompany and summarize this technical note: