How can you ensure that your application is well-documented?

Waterfall projects require documentation plan and for contents there are IEEE documentation standards. Agile projects should also allocate time for documenting project during the last sprints and use table of contents from IEEE documentation standards as templates and add links to relevant pages if project information remains available on-line or copy/paste to off-line documents if on-line access to design is revoked after project.

This is an interesting topic since documentation is only as good as where it is kept and maintained. So to that, I say having some sort Enterprise Continuum where the documentation can be leveraged and reused will help the IT organization in the long run. I been in this industry many years where I a new employee joins the team and has no where to look for good documentation to give him/her a good understanding of the IT landscape. I did not touch on what tools to use since to me the tool is only as good as how it is used and governed.

In My view, You should write code like it tells story. 1. Choose proper meaningful names so that big comments are not needed 2. Code should be simple to understand

1. Understand your audience 2. Consistency and Clarity 3. Comprehensive Coverage 4. Regular Updates 5. Useful Examples and Samples 6. Version Control and History 7. Collaborative Documentation 8. Visual Aids and Multimedia 9. Documentation Accessibility 10. Documentation Reviews If you'd like some additional information on what each of the list means reach out and I'll explain in more detail.

Usually use your code as a documentation for technical audience by various coding styles (naming standards, coding standards, design standards etc) which will help you maintain your code well in a long run as well as it makes it easier for new people to join the codebase and understand it fairly quickly. Second, use some sort of diagrams (data flow, sequence etc) to paint a high level picture of your application/system. I found PlantUML very good open-source tool in creating and maintaining diagrams because it is written in plain text and becomes part of your codebase. Document as a code ?? And lastly, have a summary in Readme.md which can live with your code and also publish to your Wiki. Remember, people hate reading long documents.

Embed descriptive comments within code and employ docstrings to explain functions, classes, and modules, ensuring clarity for developers and automatic generation of documentation.

No one ever keeps documentation up to date and those with SME knowledge may depart so as much descriptive comments in the code as possible

Comments are the most important thing when you work in a collaborative environment with many people working on branches. Its your comment that lets them solve conflicts or understand your code when merge is done.

Using comments and docstrings in code is essential for maintaining clarity and maintainability. Brief comments help other developers (and yourself in the future) to quickly understand the purpose of a piece of code, saving time and effort in reading and understanding. Docstrings, in particular, are useful for documenting the purpose and use of functions and classes, making the code easier to use and maintain. In short, these practices are fundamental for writing clean, understandable, and easy-to-maintain code.

Comments break up dense code and make it easier to scan and understand the overall flow. This is particularly helpful for revisiting or debugging code later on. Docstrings can be accessed and searched programmatically, making it easier for developers to find and understand relevant code within a project. Docstrings can be used by tools to automatically generate external documentation, such as API reference guides. This saves time and effort compared to manually writing documentation.

Coding standards and meaningful naming of code artifacts are far more important than near-code or generated documentation. Code does not lie; comments often do.

the combination of automated documentation tools, comprehensive user guides, and a robust review and update process contributes to a well-documented application. By following these practices, developers can create an environment where code and documentation evolve hand in hand, fostering collaboration and improving the overall developer and user experience.

Today we have many amazing tools to generate documentation from our code but its important to personally read through them and add points which you want your user to know.

Github copilot will allow you to quickly add in code documentation. To keep documentation up to date, you will need other tools. For example, with Swimm, developers create markdown documents with code components like variables, tokens, file/folder paths, code snippets, and diagrams. These interact directly with the code and are automatically synchronized as changes are made.

Doxygen is a documentation generator tool that can extract documentation from source code and other documentation files and generate it in a structured format, such as HTML, PDF, or LaTeX. Redoc is an open source tool for generating API documentation according to the OpenAPI specification. DapperDox is an open source, out-of-the-box solution for API documentation. It is a highly flexible tool that allows you to design pages according to your needs. In addition to the above three, there are RapiDoc, Redoc and many more tools available.

Documention is as good or is as bad, depending on the rigor and discipline of maintaining and distributing them. Another aspect is, it being persona driven. What that simply means, is if a document is presented the same way to a business user vs to a technical developer/tester then the document serves no purpose to either. The third aspect is to make it "push" based or contextual, the same function when repeated should be pushed to the developer in a MUDE or show the annotations when its used in a similar context. Experience says that documentation can make or break an environment and its maintainability.

Es importante para la correcta documentación de un proyecto, el contar no solo con información para los desarrolladores, las guías de usuario y tutoriales, ya sean escritos o por medio de video, son importantes para la correcta operación. Este tipo de documentación hace que los usuarios finales puedan visualizar y entender los flujos de operación que deben seguir para lograr los mejores resultados al operar un sistema.

Siempre hay que recordar que el usuario final en la mayoría de los casos no habla lenguaje técnico, es por eso por lo que se debe usar lenguaje claro apoyado con imágenes del proceso a realizar

Writing user guides and tutorials requires effective communication to ensure that your audience can easily understand and follow the instructions. Understand the skill level, background, and needs of your target audience. Tailor your content to their level of expertise and familiarity with the subject matter.

In my experience best tutorial is a set of short video tutorials explaining "how to". Lately we created video-tutorials by recording training sessions in Teams and adding references to topics so they can be searchable by subject.

Make sure to have Internal Reviews. Actively seek feedback from users on their experience with the documentation. This feedback is invaluable in identifying areas for improvement and making the documentation even more user-friendly. If possible then encourage contributions and updates from the community through open-source platforms.

No matter how much time was allocated for writing and reviewing documentation there will always be gaps and errors. When getting a call from users or customers Helpdesk (Level 1 Support) has to search on-line documentation and if they can't find answer in documentation issue gets escalated. If Level 2 support finds gaps or errors in documentation they update documentation and respond to Helpdesk with reference to updated documentation. They must also document steps for troubleshooting problem for the case when similar problem appears in the future.

Excelente ponto! A revis?o e a atualiza??o contínuas da documenta??o s?o fundamentais para manter sua documenta??o relevante e eficaz. Aqui est?o algumas dicas adicionais para ajudar nesse processo: - Agende revis?es regulares; - Utilize ferramentas de automa??o; - Incentive o feedback dos usuários; - Mantenha uma lista de altera??es; - Mantenha consistência; - Seja ágil; - Considere a cria??o de notas de vers?o; - Mantenha a documenta??o acessível; - Promova a documenta??o internamente.

Reviewing and ensuring that your documents are up-to-date is an essential part of any organization or business. Keeping them accurate and current helps ensure the accuracy of your operations, as well as ensuring that you have all the right input for decision-making. Updating your documents enables you to be in touch with changing trends, regulations, and other influences so that you can make the best possible decisions for your company. The changes can be related to technical aspects or operational aspects.

Please remember that documentations are living documents and needs regular review/update to keep them relevant. Reviews and feedbacks are powerful tool to address any oversight/gap/errors in docmentation and to socialise in wider community within organisation.

1. Outline a clear structure including installation instructions, API references, and usage examples. 2. Utilize tools like Swagger for API documentation and platforms like GitHub Wiki or Read the Docs for comprehensive guides. 3. Regularly update documentation alongside code changes and encourage team collaboration to maintain accuracy and relevance. With these steps, you can ensure that your documentation stays up-to-date and easily accessible for your team and users. #documentation #API #collaboration

If it is important, always have someone to do documentation testing. It is not your customer that should tell you that tutorial or particular statement in documentation is wrong. In our company we force junior employees to follow our own tutorials as onboarding process. They are required to outline and comment anything awkward, misleading or even wrong. The benefit is enormous for all: customers, juniors and documentation writers.

In order to make sure that your application is well-documented, you should start with a good structure and organize your documentation logically, with clear sections and navigation. Cover all aspects such as installation, usage, API references, examples, troubleshooting. Maintain a consistent style, formatting, and terminology throughout. Include real-world examples and business use cases that are specific to implementation. Align your documentation with software versions and updates as needed. Encourage user feedback to address gaps and improve clarity. Ensure readability for your diverse audiences and consider different learning styles that is understandable and usable by a wide range of users.

"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." – Martin Fowler The absolute best form of documentation is clean readable application code with unit tests that demonstrate the intended use. Other type of documentation gets outdated quickly - as application functionality evolves, few developers will have it as a priority to keep documentation in sync. Self-documenting code is really the only way to maintain accurate application documentation in sync with current functionality. It's simple, but not easy, and is only possible when it's part of an organization's tech culture.

Build a template that’s based on the structure used in online documentations like Oracle, IBM and Microsoft Azure. Reuse that template everywhere and try to document clear guidelines. If the budget allows it, hire a technical writer to help.