The Role of Technical Documentation in Developer Success
July 14, 2024
Frameworks, documentation for developers, application programming interface structure, or README files. Is it like Greek to you? It does not need to be. Together, we can delve into the significance and advantages of technical documentation. Our article will also cover artificial intelligence and its potential to cut down on your overall documentation workload.
What falls under the category of technical documentation?
Making a clear distinction between technical documentation and other types of writing is essential. Technical audiences and developers typically do not care to read marketing texts; instead, they want to be able to find and understand the information they need quickly and easily. So, make sure you maintain a strict boundary between the two worlds at all times.
Then, what exactly does technical documentation mean? Basically, anything that can serve as a technical guide and navigation for a particular audience. When you provide your clients with technical products like APIs, , or integrations, any document that explains how it works,what it can do, and how to maintain it is considered technical documentation. On the other hand, product features, price, marketing collateral, and specifications do not belong in a technical document. Stay away from blending these two worlds.
What is the best way to begin?
We can move on to content planning now that we understand the distinction between the two types of documentation. The process will be more hindered than beneficial without proper planning and organization. To make it easier to understand, we have divided the entire process into four main steps.
Identify your need
As a first and crucial step, identify your needs. This might mean a complete developer portal with in-depth tutorials for one business, and a high-level overview of all available integrations and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for another. Rather than relying on relative estimates, you should talk to the developers - the individuals who will be putting the documentation to use, to identify your true requirements. While your internal developer team may have some insight, it is also wise to poll the developer team of your customers to find out which parts of the product guides they need, and which sections are missing in order to make the integration curve shorter.
