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How can you improve documentation quality without sacrificing development speed?

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Documentation is an essential part of software engineering, but it can also be a source of frustration and delay. How can you create and maintain high-quality documentation that helps your users, teammates, and future self without slowing down your development process? In this article, you will learn some practical tips and tools that can help you improve your documentation quality without sacrificing development speed.

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Nishan Naseer

Principal Engineering Manager @ Microsoft | Driving Cloud Innovation

1 Define your documentation goals

Before you start writing or updating your documentation, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you are writing for. Your documentation goals should align with your project objectives, user needs, and stakeholder expectations. For example, you might want to document your code to make it easier to understand, debug, and reuse; or you might want to document your features to help your users learn how to use them effectively. Depending on your goals, you will need different types of documentation, such as comments, READMEs, tutorials, guides, API references, or manuals.

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Md Fazle Rabbi Supta

IT Expert
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Define your documentation goals: Your documentation goals should align with your project objectives, user needs, and stakeholder expectations. For example, you might want to document your code to make it easier to understand

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2 Use documentation standards and templates

One way to improve your documentation quality is to follow some standards and templates that can help you structure, format, and organize your content. Standards and templates can ensure consistency, readability, and completeness of your documentation across your project and team. You can use existing standards and templates from reputable sources, such as Google, Microsoft, or Mozilla; or you can create your own based on your project needs and preferences. For example, you can use docstrings to document your functions and classes, Markdown to write your READMEs and guides, or Sphinx to generate your API references.

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3 Automate documentation generation and testing

Another way to improve your documentation quality is to automate some of the tasks that can be tedious, error-prone, or time-consuming. For example, you can use tools like Doxygen, Javadoc, or Swagger to generate documentation from your code annotations; or you can use tools like Docusaurus, MkDocs, or VuePress to generate documentation websites from your Markdown files. You can also use tools like DocTest, PyTest, or Jest to test your code examples and snippets in your documentation and ensure that they are correct and up-to-date.

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Nishan Naseer

Principal Engineering Manager @ Microsoft | Driving Cloud Innovation
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One of my favorite tools is github copilot. I can "/explain" or "/doc" any piece of code to generate documentation. Over the last few months, this has improved quite a lot, that it saves me a lot of typing!

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4 Integrate documentation into your workflow

To avoid documentation becoming an afterthought or a burden, you should integrate it into your workflow and make it part of your development cycle. You can use tools like Git, GitHub, or GitLab to manage your documentation files and versions, collaborate with your team, and review and merge changes. You can also use tools like Read the Docs, Netlify, or GitHub Pages to host and deploy your documentation online and keep it synchronized with your code. You can also use tools like Travis CI, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions to automate your documentation building and testing as part of your continuous integration and delivery pipeline.

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5 Solicit feedback and improve iteratively

Finally, to improve your documentation quality, you should solicit feedback from your users, teammates, and stakeholders and use it to improve your documentation iteratively. You can use tools like Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, or Typeform to collect feedback from your users and measure their satisfaction and pain points. You can also use tools like Slack, Discord, or GitHub Discussions to communicate with your team and stakeholders and gather their suggestions and opinions. You can also use tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, or Mixpanel to track and analyze your documentation usage and performance and identify areas for improvement.

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6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

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How can you improve documentation quality without sacrificing development speed?

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1 Define your documentation goals

2 Use documentation standards and templates

3 Automate documentation generation and testing

4 Integrate documentation into your workflow

5 Solicit feedback and improve iteratively

6 Here’s what else to consider

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