Senior software developer at Amazon Web Services. I work on the AWS Serverless Application Repository and AWS SAM. I’m passionate about writing quality software and teaching others how to do the same.
Location
Seattle, WA
Education
BS Computer Engineering, Minors: CS and Math
Work
Sr. Software Development Engineer at Amazon Web Services
First, figure out which docs need to be kept up to date. Not all of them do. Some of them are just a point-in-time artifact of the design process.
For documentation that does need to stay up to date (user documentation), I have two tips. First, keep the documentation as close to code as possible and utilize tools to generate the documentation from the code, e.g., Javadoc and Swagger. Then call out misses on documentation updates during code reviews as you would any other code issue.
For documentation that isn't as connected to code, e.g., a user guide, make documentation a first-class part of planning a feature, just as you would code, tests, etc. If you're using an agile process like scrum, make sure you create and estimate tasks around documentation updates during feature development.
I have a feature checklist that I use during the story planning process to ensure I always consider whether I need to plan in explicit tasks for things like documentation.
Good points,
How a small team can keep an updated doc ?
First, figure out which docs need to be kept up to date. Not all of them do. Some of them are just a point-in-time artifact of the design process.
For documentation that does need to stay up to date (user documentation), I have two tips. First, keep the documentation as close to code as possible and utilize tools to generate the documentation from the code, e.g., Javadoc and Swagger. Then call out misses on documentation updates during code reviews as you would any other code issue.
For documentation that isn't as connected to code, e.g., a user guide, make documentation a first-class part of planning a feature, just as you would code, tests, etc. If you're using an agile process like scrum, make sure you create and estimate tasks around documentation updates during feature development.
I have a feature checklist that I use during the story planning process to ensure I always consider whether I need to plan in explicit tasks for things like documentation.
Hope this helps!
"keep the documentation as close to code as possible" great point, we will try this, thank you James