product-artifacts.md

title	layout	category	description	redirect_from	cSpell
Product Artifacts	article	Product	Documentation Templates including SBARs, 1-Pagers, RFCs	/articles/sbar-template.html /articles/rfc-template.html /articles/eng-design-doc.html	ignore rollplans

Here are a few product artifact (documentation) templates that we use in the Login.gov program. They're all related in that they're forms of documentation for sharing out ideas, but have different intended use cases.

1-Pagers

Brief explanatory documents. Not actually restricted to one page.

Links

• 1-Pager template (copyable link)

When to Use

• Providing background information on a topic
• Documenting a problem or an issue that users experience
• Building alignment around a problem that we might want to solve or communicating potential work
• Ideally used when building consensus

RFCs

"Requests for Comments" or Pitches

Links

• RFC template (copyable link)
• Folder of existing RFCs

When to Use

• For internal, behind-the-scenes work
• In-depth engineering plans

SBARs

SBAR is a document format. It's short for Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation, which are the four sections of the document.

Links

• SBAR Template (copyable link)

When to Use

• Collecting feedback from leadership on proposed changes
• Weighing multiple choices to solve a problem
• Ideally used when you have high urgency, or something which requires a timely decision (eg. production user impact, upcoming deadline, etc)

Other Documentation Templates

• [Rollplans]({% link _articles/rollplans.md %}), for live changes to production
• [Incident Review]({% link _articles/incident-review-template.md %}), for a retrospective on incidents