Technical documentation is too valuable to ignore or put off, but it can be tedious to create when you’re also focused on development tasks.
Luckily, creating documentation doesn’t have to feel like a chore. Today’s software documentation tools and the following best practices for technical documentation can dramatically speed up the process and make it less tedious. By planning your documentation, you can also create better technical content for your users and other audiences.
In this article, we will explore how to create technical documentation with ease.
The purpose of technical documentation
Technical documentation serves as a guide for users, other developers, and anyone else who needs to understand the mindset you have behind the technical decisions about your software. Often, technical documentation includes information about how the software was written and how to troubleshoot or identify potential sources behind software problems.
There are a lot of reasons someone might be reading or might need technical documentation:
Internal needs
Your company’s marketers, your developer teammates, and your support team may need to refer back later to technical documentation.
For example, you might create distinct technical documentation for your team that’s different from what you publish externally for customers. Documentation could serve as part of your onboarding process for new engineers. Your team might also need to see how their code impacts other teams within your organization or use the documentation to help with planning code maintenance. Good technical debt management also requires strong documentation.
User and customer needs
End-users and the companies they work with are an example of personnel outside your company that benefit from having technical documentation at hand. For instance, they may develop a custom integration and want to know more about how your software works, or their engineers may use documentation as a guide when troubleshooting their use of your software.
Other development work
Documentation can also benefit anyone creating integrations, anyone providing services or products that can be used alongside your product, and other development teams. Guides for outside audiences may be somewhat different and may be designed to be more accessible to development teams who aren’t as familiar with your software as your own team would be.
Writing technical documentation does take time and effort, so it can be helpful to think about who the audience for your technical documentation is, what they are looking for from your documentation, and how they will be using your information. From there, you should do what you can to avoid common documentation mistakes.
Common difficulties with managing technical documentation
Great technical documentation takes time to create and maintain, so even the best documentation may eventually contain errors and be imperfect. That's why it's important to have robust technical documentation management processes in place. When you’re planning to create your technical documentation, keep in mind that the following issues are common, and plan how you’ll avoid adding problems to your technical content:
- Messy and confusing to read: Maybe you know what you’re trying to say, but someone else doesn’t have the right context to understand your message. Or if documentation is difficult to follow, your audience might not find the guidance they’re looking for.
- Too much jargon: Even if someone has the same technical background you do, they may be unfamiliar with some of the terminology you use in your work.
- Inconsistencies: Documentation that uses terms and concepts inconsistently may confuse your readers. For instance, if your content references Azure exclusively but then suddenly uses AWS-specific lingo without warning, this may be confusing and not as useful for readers.
- Out-of-date content: Over time, the content you wrote will age and will need an update or an overhaul. You may reference technologies that are now obsolete, making the outdated version less helpful. If your company uses Agile or has fairly frequent releases, code can very quickly become outdated and cause the documentation to become obsolete along with it.
When you experience these problems within your technical documentation, its value decreases. Those creating documentation should do whatever they can to develop problem-free documentation from the beginning and maintain your content throughout its lifecycle.
How to create technical documentation faster
In the long run, the more you do to plan and create better documentation from the beginning, the faster the process will be. The following best practices for technical documentation can streamline the documentation process and ensure the content is useful for your audience.
