Teams with high quality documentation are 2.4 times more likely to improve software delivery performance and meet reliability goals.

We all understand the importance of good documentation. But how often do you feel frustrated when trying to understand how a feature works? trying to find a solution for your problem? checking the source code instead of docs? Probably often.

Let's start with the difference between good and bad documentation. According to DORA, high-quality documentation should:
- Help users achieve their goals.
- Be accurate, up-to-date, and complete.
- Be easy to find, well-organized, and clear.

Tips to improve documentation:
✏️ Document Critical Use Cases. Clear use cases help users understand how to use your systems effectively.
✏️ Create Documentation Guidelines. When team members know when and how to make updates or remove inaccurate information, the team can maintain documentation quality over time. Check out Google’s Documentation Guideline.
✏️ Automate Guidelines Verification. Automate formatting and style checks with tools like Prettier.
✏️ Assign Ownership. Define clear responsibility and ownership for the documentation.
✏️ Define the Audience. Understand who will read your documentation, their background, and their goals.
✏️ Integrate into Development Process. Documentation should be part of your development process and stored close to the code. Documentation that is separate from development becomes dead right after publishing.
✏️ Automate testing for code samples or incomplete documentation.
✏️ Train your team. Teach your team how to write good documentation and explain why it’s important. I strongly recommend to check Google’s technical writing course for developers.
✏️ Recognize Documentation Work. Recognize and reward documentation efforts during performance reviews and promotions. Writing and maintaining documentation is a core part of software engineering work, and treating it as such improves its quality.

Writing good documentation isn’t easy. It requires clear processes, training, automation, and the right team culture. But investing in documentation improves your team’s development speed and overall delivery performance.

#documentation