Write the case study before the project ends
Why I keep a running decision log, and how it turns into a case study in an afternoon.
Note
Notes are where things go before they turn into a case study. Some never do, and that’s fine.
Most case studies are written months later, from memory, by someone who has already moved on. They end up describing the final screens and very little of how we got there.
So I keep a decision log from the first week. Every entry is short: the date, what we decided, what we gave up, and who disagreed. It takes two minutes at the end of a working session.
When a project ends, the log is already the outline. The context and the problem are in the first entries. The decisions are the middle. What we cut is everything marked as given up. I only have to choose the screens.
The log is also where the commentary on this site comes from. Each note is a line I wrote while it was still true, not a story I tidied up afterward.
If you start one tomorrow, keep it boring. A plain document with dates works better than a template you will stop filling in by week three.