Technical Documentation for Web and Mobile Apps

Every file you need to know about when starting a new project

When you’re working on a new project it can be so exciting that you skip technical documentation and jump right into development. This creates tons of headaches down the road with managing a developer, meeting spec requirements, or just having a successful launch. Through this blog I hope to give a brief overview of things to think about when drafting the first version of the technical documentation.

Choosing a Stack

It might not seem like it right now, but the language/framework you choose in the beginning will shape your entire architecture. Do you want to go with the trendiest framework (Node JS at the time of this writing) or do you want to go with the tried and true?

Frameworks and languages all have different pros and cons. Some are better for applications that need high concurrency (think lots of people messaging, interacting, and making requests all at once). Others are just easier to work with because so many people have built on top of them. Frameworks and languages are something you must discuss before development. If you realize a few months down the road that you can’t meet a performance metric after squeezing everything you can out your code and need to change the framework, you’re basically starting again from scratch.

Also rumor has it Node JS is losing it’s hype and Google’s GoLang actually preforms better in high concurrent environments.

Milestones

Every successful build has once been broken down into milestones. It’s very difficult to paint a picture for an app and then just start hacking away randomly. Even if your team can do this, you’ll either loose a lot of performance or they’re lying to you.

Proper technical documentation must break up the application or system into byte size pieces. These pieces need to include the break down of the database storage, routes and basic architecture, and developer operations. When thinking about the database storage you need to know what information to store and access to make the application function. Routes and basic architecture consist of what pages you will have and how people will reach them. It might not seem like it now, but SEO must be thought of from the beginning. Routes and architecture extremely influence SEO. Lastly developer operations are where your application will live. Most people choose to use a cloud service. It removes the headache of managing physical machines in a personal datacenter.

This was an extremely brief read for what can be an extensive document. If you need more information, an example, or assistance making the doc please reach out to me here. Don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list for exclusive templates and content!