Show HN: A set of standard document templates | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: A set of standard document templates

433 pointskostarelo34 comments

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

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Expected Word documents. Relieved when I saw it’s Markdown.

HN will be HN. Thank you for that!

This is very cool! Would love to see a set of template legal documents on there too someday, something like Basecamp's https://github.com/basecamp/policies

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...)

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. :)

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

pitch deck : https://blog.ycombinator.com/intro-to-the-yc-seed-deck/

Nice one, could probably convert it to a Markdown format as well.

I particularly like the links to the basis of each template in the various sections.

>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?

Yeah definitely not every week, but it's nice to have a single reference to go to the moment that you need them.

This could grow into an awesome-document-templates list..

Indeed and I would love to see what people have been using.

I hope it does

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?

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

roadmaps : https://usefyi.com/templates/roadmap-templates/

Can anyone comment on Coda? First time I've seen it - looks pretty cool.

I created this template using steve blank's book

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f8pRkNiRiG7FWYJRaylVSyoRfAX...

Much of it would work as a nested list. (org-mode user here :))

- Post-mortem

- Incident report

- Scheduled down time

Clickable link: https://github.com/kbariotis/templates

How do you know me so well

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.]

> 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?

Because the slides are made from foil? Or at least they look like the are?

Perhaps it's a language thing, to me "foil" without a qualifier means exclusively aluminium foil. I'd never have called ohp acetate "foil".

I know them as "transparencies", but according to this "foils" was also common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection)

Made from foil? As in metal foil? But metal isn’t transparent.

The best candidate I found for the etymology is Ozalid Viewfoil, which I can't find an image, but it sounds like the transparencies came with a photosensitive coating that would fixed to the transparency during a development step.

https://books.google.com/books?id=TZ3F1OYZdEcC&ppis=_e&lpg=R...

Foil is a standard name for well transparent foil.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection)

Lol that still doesn’t explain it - they’re called foils because their name is foils? That’s tautological!

It's from French feuille, for 'leaf', so it's used for all these thin film things that are leaf-thin.

Demanded an answer to his question and didn't even say thank you.

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.

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