Advices

You are what you document (Monday, May 5, 2014)

The number one cause of startup failure is not the product, but the distribution: it doesn’t matter how good the product is if no one uses it.

With software, the documentation is the distribution: it doesn’t matter how good the code is if no one uses it. If it isn’t documented, it doesn’t exist.

Doc

13 Things People Hate about Your Open Source Docs

Beautiful docs

Designing Great API Docs (11 Jan 2012)

Docness

Consider the documentation as a component of your product, i.e. don’t package it as an external product or as an option.

In software development, your “product” is usually made of the software, which itself is usually based on source code.

Docness Source code

Hacking distributed (february 2013)

In the beginning, there was no documentation.

These days, infrastructure software has terrible documentation.

Take heed of these commandments, for, among hackers, judgment day is every day .

Jacob Kaplan-Moss (November 10, 2009)

Agile documentation best practices

Ideally, an agile document is just barely good enough, or just barely sufficient, for the situation at hand.

Documentation is an important part of agile software development projects, but unlike traditionalists who often see documentation as a risk reduction strategy, agilists typically see documentation as a strategy which increases overall project risk and therefore strive to be as efficient as possible when it comes to documentation.

Agilists write documentation when that’s the best way to achieve the relevant goals, but there often proves to be better ways to achieve those goals than writing static documentation .

This article summarizes common « best practices » which agilists have adopted with respect to documentation.

Best practices for increasing the agility of documentation:

Writing

Prefer executable specifications over static documents Document stable concepts, not speculative ideas Generate system documentation

Simplification

Keep documentation just simple enough, but not too simple Write the fewest documents with least overlap Put the information in the most appropriate place Display information publicly

Determining What to Document

Document with a purpose Focus on the needs of the actual customers(s) of the document The customer determines sufficiency

Determining When to Document

Iterate, iterate, iterate Find better ways to communicate Start with models you actually keep current Update only when it hurts

General

Treat documentation like a requirement Require people to justify documentation requests Recognize that you need some documentation Get someone with writing experience

Best Practices for Documenting Technical Procedures Melanie Seibert

Plone

Twilio

TODO