Often, the best time to do certain documentation types (like procedures and pr ocesses) is when you’re actually executing them. This is the “Agile” approach to documentation.
#DOCUMENTATION WRITERS UPDATE#
Unless you aren’t sure about how a process is actually going to play out or how you’re going to execute your “vision,” it’s best not to document it and wait until things materialize a bit.įor example, if you’re planning a significant update in the next quarter and the work is only in the high-level conceptual stage, don’t engage documentation resources just yet. The general idea is to not start too early (or late).
Would it make your teams get better at what they do?.Will your documentation improve your tier zero support and enable your end-users to resolve their issues on their own (deflection)?.Other than these, you might also want to think about how your documentation efforts will help you at a higher level: Or will your HR resource refer to it when processing applications? You have “information-oriented” documentation here.Īnd will your documentation really help them? Or will your developers use it as they work and collaborate on your next release cycle? In which case, you’re looking at “understanding-oriented” documentation. Will your customers follow your documentation step-by-step to get started with your solution? Which makes your documentation “goal-oriented.” Think in terms of how the intended users will interact with your documentation. Are they knowledge workers? Think about what these target audiences struggle with… and if you can genuinely empower them to do better by documenting.Īlso, think about how they will use it.
#DOCUMENTATION WRITERS SOFTWARE#
The target readers for your documentation could be anyone from an end-user to your software developer(s) or HR person.
#DOCUMENTATION WRITERS HOW TO#
So before answering the “ how to write documentation” question, know if you must document it at all.īefore you document, think about your target readers. And you might also be generating a LOT of knowledge in your daily work.īut it’s not possible to document everything… and not everything needs to be documented. You could have a codebase of thousands of lines. There may be even more ways to customize it. Determine if you truly need to document it With that in mind, let’s start with our guide on how to write documentation. information-oriented reference materialĪs you can understand from how he puts it, every piece of documentation has a different objective, and those responsible for the documentation must establish it each time they set out to create one.In his talk on the types of documentation, Daniele Procida or Divio AG categorizes documentation into four types: Based on its purpose, a documentation piece can be one of four types. But before we see those, let’s take a quick look at the different documentation types. While there’s no one standard way to create all this documentation, the fundamental steps remain the same. Others rely on standard operating procedures, reference material, process documents, checklists - typical company knowledge documentation.Ĭustomers, too, use customer-facing documentation to learn their way around a solution or debug their issues on their own (tier 0 support).Support and technical teams use user guides, installation manuals, code notes - “core” technical documentation.Marketing teams work with playbooks - a sort of marketing documentation.Your life can be so much easier once you know how to write documentation - good, helpful documentation that actually gives its users what they need from it.
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