Developer Documentation: Best Practices
Importance of Developer Documentation
Developer documentation is a must, but no one likes working on it. Developers prefer to deal with code rather than build documentation. Let’s figure out why it is so important and how to make it efficient and enjoyable for readers.
Developer documentation has the following benefits:
- Explains how the code works and what it does;
- Explains product features;
- Helps other team members easily get involved in work;
- Helps you quickly remember what you were doing and why;
- Helps to keep track of code changes and their reasons.
In other words, no one will remember what the team was working on and why without good developer documentation. In case every step is properly documented, even new hires will be able to go on working on a product. Even if several developers leave the company, nothing will be lost, provided they have created detailed developer documentation.
How to Improve Developer Documentation?
Developer documentation is not just dry text with code samples; it can be interactive and efficient. Here are the must-follow practices to build highly informative developer documentation:
- Centralize your documentation. If all documentation is stored in one place, users will easily find it. Especially if documentation offers enough navigation elements.
- Gather feedback. You’ll find out what is really informative and what is not. The best solution is to write documentation for a new developer in mind and give detailed explanations.
- Make code samples nice-looking. Today, most documentation tools offer text highlighters to make code samples visible, which is really helpful as docs become readable. Many tools offer to use special tabs to demonstrate several code samples simultaneously.
- Provide readers with additional information. These can be FAQs, learning materials, and other related resources. They help new developers with successful onboarding and learning what they need to know to start working on a product.
- Use different types of content. As a rule, developer documentation consists of text and code samples. But not only these types of content can be used. For example, screenshots and screencasts can work very well.
- Describe all the changes. That is vital as later on no one will be able to remember why something has been changed.
- Update documentation timely. Software products change rapidly: new features may appear every 3–6 months. Developer documentation should reflect all that. Create a plan to work on the existing documentation to keep it relevant.
- Use cloud tools to create and publish documentation. That’s very convenient. A cloud tool will allow all your team members to cooperate in the same environment. Besides, online documentation is accessible from any place and any device.
All the above-mentioned steps are easy to follow if you use the right documentation tool. Pay attention to the following features when choosing one:
- Collaboration;
- Customization;
- Single sourcing, content reuse;
- Analytics and reporting;
- Translation and localization (for those who create multi-language documentation).
All these features together will help you write great developer documentation.
If you still doubt whether to pay enough attention to creating developer documentation or not, think of the strategic value that you will get: efficient developer documentation provides long-term growth.
