The System
Reflecting on documentation as a living knowledge system, and how structure, lifecycle thinking, and reuse determine whether information holds up over time.
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How Spec-Driven Development Can Benefit Documentation Work
Read more >: How Spec-Driven Development Can Benefit Documentation WorkSpec-driven development can help documentation even if the spec is not maintained after release. Its value is in the development window, when product intent is clearer, more structured, and easier to use. That can give technical writers better source material and a chance to clarify gaps earlier, while documentation engineers can use the structure to…
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How to Choose a CCMS Based on Your Documentation Needs
Read more >: How to Choose a CCMS Based on Your Documentation NeedsThere is no universally “best” CCMS. Different documentation platforms are designed around different assumptions about structure, governance, collaboration, publishing, maintenance, and scale. A system that works well for support-oriented knowledge sharing may become painful for complex product documentation over time, while a heavily structured platform may create unnecessary overhead for smaller or simpler documentation environments.…
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Mapping the Knowledge System
Read more >: Mapping the Knowledge SystemThe diagram I’ve been building toward (the foundation of a new series launching on The Doc Landscape called The Living Knowledge System) maps the system that product knowledge actually moves through in a software company. Not all knowledge in a company. Not HR onboarding or sales enablement or anything else. Specifically the knowledge that’s born…
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Docs-as-Code: A Good Idea in the Wrong Hands
Read more >: Docs-as-Code: A Good Idea in the Wrong HandsDocs-as-code has two versions in circulation and they rarely get distinguished. The narrow one says: write in plain text, use Git, work like an engineer. The broader one says: bring structure, rigor, and shared ownership to documentation work, using whatever tools best serve that goal.
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The Real Communication Barriers in Distributed Documentation Teams
Read more >: The Real Communication Barriers in Distributed Documentation TeamsTechnical writers depend on cross-functional communication more than almost any other role in software. In distributed teams, that communication breaks down in different ways.