Thread by @alexpotato

How I learned to love writing tech documentation and how you can get other people to love it too (including yourself).

A thread.

I’ll do this by laying out misconception that people have about documentation and talk about why it’s not true and how you can fix it and change people’s attitudes.

Misconception 1: Documentation is so hard to write.

Documentation can mean lots of different things. If we’re talking about a 700 page NASA flight manual, then sure, docs can take a long time to write and involve serious resources. That being said...

Docs can also mean “here are the top 5 things you need to know about X” Eg where does it run, how does it start, where are the logs etc.

For the person trying to figure this out at 3am, those 5 - 10 lines are a lifesaver.

But even if you are writing a “flight manual” it’s worth it. Why? Because docs fulfill so many different roles:
Eg they are like mechanized training.
Eg 2 they can act as a checklist to make sure things happen in the right order
Etc.
More on this later.

One other item: tools like Confluence etc make writing docs so easy! Plus, once you learn the keyboard shortcuts it feels like a superpower. Think of when you figured out the #vim basics or first played a PC game with the mouse AND keyboard. It’s that cool!

Misconception 2: Developers never write documentation.

Aka “I asked for documentation and was sent a giant email chain”

Look at a blank piece of paper. Then think: “what should I write here for some people who are not me but who might want to know something about all of this stuff. I know? Plus, I majored in tech, not biz writing!”

That’s what developers go through when you ask them “Hey, can you write me some documentation?” Also, developers are not always the best at Confluence etc b/c it’s not their primary tool.

Now, think about this from a dev perspective: “Oh wow, I was asked to fill out this skeleton form of docs that asks me all the key questions they want to know! This is so easy, done.”

You might occasionally get someone who says: “This feels like more work, why should I do this?”

To which I answer: “You can do this once and never get asked these question again. Or not, and we can keep pestering you with questions every time a new hire joins.”

Misconception 3: nobody ever reads documentation

“Nobody”, “never”, “always” and “everyone” are big words. If you spend 30 minutes writing a doc that ONLY ONE PERSON reads and it saves them several hours of time. You just saved the company potentially thousands of $$$

Another example: it’s the middle of a giant outage and the CEO asks “How the F does this work?” And you can say “Here is a quick recap I wrote a few months ago that you can read while I fix it”. Only one person may read it but it was the right person.

3rd example: I’ve written tons of documentation and at times thought: “Is anybody reading this??” And then one of the devs said “I was in a meeting and someone asked ‘who is going to doc this?’ ‘Easy! Alex! We all read his docs b/c they are great’ “

Moral of the story: write docs. People will read them (even if they don’t tell you).

Misconception 4: We all know it so why write it down.

I once worked at a firm that had a Sunday startup procedure where the ENTIRE tech stack came up in a 15 minute window.
Something broke during my rotation so I thought: “This seems important so let me wrote this down.” and then I showed it to more senior folks...

Everyone said “there are multiple things wrong with this documentation.”
The kicker: they didn’t agree what was wrong! Eg There were different versions of what Step 3 was. For a 10 year old process that everyone “totally knew how it worked.”

In other words, writing things down created a common shared “touchstone” that people can “diff” vs their own mental model. When people realize their mental models don’t align, it’s MAGIC to watch the adjustments happen.

If you liked this thread, here is a meta thread of my other threads:

https://twitter.com/alexpotato/status/1212223167944478720?s=21