7 Proven Technical Documentation Best Practices

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• What is technical documentation?
• Why does technical documentation fail?
• 7 technical documentation best practices to capture knowledge
• FAQs
• Create interactive & brand-aligned documentation 

In 2019, Spotify's internal tech teams had no outlined workflows to document information. When everyone made documents — on Google Docs, Confluence, GitHub and microsites, "not finding the right information" inevitably became one of the three biggest blockers of productivity for their engineering teams. 

💡 Check out our list of the top Google Docs alternatives and competitors for the top editing and collaborative documentation tools!

‎Today, Spotify's response to this chaos and how they improved collaboration, communication and efficiency is a case study on the impact of clear and concrete technical documentation. 

Technical documentation can be a single source of truth for developers and end-users. If you're eager to replicate Spotify's success and create a seamless flow of info internally and externally, here's where to start. 

We've curated a list of seven technical documentation best practices for accurate and actionable documentation—without any hassle. 

TL;DR: Technical & IT documentation best practices

• Technical & IT documentation is crucial for developers, end-users, sales, and knowledge management.
• Common mistakes in technical documentation include complexity, jargon, inaccessibility, outdated content, and difficulty in finding information.
• Seven IT documentation best practices for effective technical documents include preliminary research, navigational structure and design, consistent template creation, reader-friendly content, choosing the right software, and consistent auditing and updating.
• Scribe is the best AI-powered tool for automating and standardizing technical documentation.

Automate IT documentation in seconds with Scribe ➜

Wh‎at is technical documentation?

Technical documentation refers to all documents—updates, user guides, customer-facing help content, workflows and templates—that explain a product to internal and external stakeholders. 

It defines processes for internal development and instructs end-users on how the product works. 

Technical & IT documentation is helpful in many ways, such as:

• End-user support to guide users through every feature and functionality.
• Developer support to help software development teams build, update and maintain the product. 
• Sales and marketing to convey the correct information to potential customers. 
• Knowledge management to capture and store all information in one place.  

💡Learn more about navigating AI knowledge management

Wh‎y does technical documentation fail? 

While writing documentation seems simple in theory, it's riddled with challenges in practice. Most teams can't make the most of their documentation because of a few common mistakes. 

You might be making these mistakes if your product documentation is:

1. Too complicated to follow: Your technical writing is not reader-friendly. You've crammed too much information, technical description and complicated concepts in your doc. 
2. Jargon-heavy: The content doesn't match the target audience's level of understanding. It's filled with complex terms and jargon. 
3. Not easily accessible: You've stored the documents in a siloed location with no search or share functionality. 
4. Outdated and duplicated: Your content is old and repetitive across multiple documents, making it redundant for readers. 
5. Time-consuming to find: Your knowledge management portal is flawed and takes up too much of users' time and effort looking for information or searching for the answer. 

If you ticked off any of these issues, we've sourced a list of seven technical documentation best practices from our experts to guide the way for you. 

7 ‎te‎chnical documentation best practices to capture knowledge

1. Perform preliminary research to create a documentation plan
2. Outline navigational structure and on-page design
3. Create documentation templates to replicate & maintain consistency
4. Create & iterate the content to make it reader-friendly
5. Choose the right documentation tools to maximize accessibility
6. Initial launch & test the document's validity
7. Audit & update the content consistently

There's no secret sauce to creating effective technical documentation. But we have something even better — a list of seven documentation tips to hit the nail on the head for your documentation system. 

1. Perform preliminary research to create a documentation plan

Like any other business process, start your documentation strategy by creating a plan. This would ideally include:

• Setting relevant goals.
• Establishing timelines.
• Prioritizing milestones. 
• Identifying the target audience.
• Choosing the right metrics.

Making informed decisions is crucial when it comes to technical documentation. A documentation audit can prepare a solid groundwork to chalk out this plan. Analyze your current IT documentation and perform a needs analysis to understand the gaps and opportunities for your documentation process. Asking employees about their pain points can help your research. 

The audit insights will help you choose the right goals and timelines for your documentation framework. Pair this up with milestones and metrics and you're all set to kickstart the actual work. 

2. Outline navigational structure and on-page design

Good user experience design equals better usability of your technical documents because it can simplify information and maximize reader engagement. Design can refine your software documentation by offering clarity that words sometimes can't. 

Pay special attention to your document design to ensure your knowledge base is appealing and interactive. Here are a few handy design tips for delivering a seamless reader experience:

• Follow a standard structure for every page to place all the elements in a consistent position. 
• Create a style guide for content formatting to ensure every page has a uniform interface. 

Here's a snippet of Google's style guide for its documentation team.  

‍Add a topic-wise breakdown for every page to ensure easy accessibility.

Notion's user resources page is the perfect example of this, with a navigation menu on the left containing all the main categories and subcategories. 

📌 Check out our list of the best knowledge base software & tools

3. Create documentation templates to replicate & maintain consistency 

Design can make or break your documentation game. That's where product documentation templates can help. Instead of considering design as an afterthought, follow these tips to create a flawless user experience. 

But we understand that designing your documents, especially technical ones, can be tricky. If beautifying every doc isn't your cup of tea, let Scribe do the heavy lifting. Scribe is a step-by-step guide generator that does the documenting for you—complete with text and annotated screenshots. 

📌 Related resource: Best Practices for IT Documentation, Templates & Examples

4. Create & iterate the content to make it reader-friendly

Most teams fail at creating content that actually helps because they treat it like a one-and-done task. In reality, good documentation practices are an ongoing process with multiple stages of editing and updating. 

If you're wondering how to write technical documentation, here are some ground rules to remember:

• Speak to your SMEs: Tap into the expertise and knowledge of your subject matter experts to find the most accurate content for your documents. Reach out to SMEs through 1:1 interviews, questionnaires, or group discussions. You can also let technical writers prepare the first draft while you edit it for consistency and clarity. 
• Adopt reader-friendly language: Use easy and everyday language to make sure your documentation is accessible to everyone. Write in a conversational tone—how you'd like people to perceive your brand. You should also focus on using short sentences, less complicated words, an active voice and a coherent flow. 

Look at how monday.com takes a lighthearted tone to address its users in one of its help center articles. It's fun and gives you the feeling of talking to a friend! 

• Make it scannable: Your readers — employees and end-users — are too busy to spend more than a few seconds on a technical document. To give them quick solutions without compromising clarity and accuracy, draft your content structure for skimmability. Use bullet points, line breaks, short paragraphs, pull quotes and white space. 

Webflow's help center is one of the best technical documentation examples. The document uses a highlighted section to mark essential details, followed by short paragraphs and a bulleted list—proper documentation that's easy to read.

• Ask users to provide feedback: Creating content is just the first step. Constant iteration based on readers' feedback is where all the heavy lifting happens. Ask employees and users to review the docs and leave feedback on what you can improve. 

Here's how LaunchNotes collects documentation feedback from users with negative reactions to any document. It's convenient for the users and helpful for the team to identify the exact issue. 

‍Without the right content, your documentation efforts aren't worth the hassle. So, prepare a solid knowledge management strategy for your content creation process to ensure you're producing nothing but the best. 

5. Choose the right documentation tools to maximize accessibility 

Circling back to Spotify's case, missing out on the correct information can be a major challenge for companies. If there's one easy and efficient fix for this, it's choosing the right technical writing Chrome extensions or tools to standardize and store your documents. 

The best technical documentation tools make information more accessible, shareable and consumable. One tool that fits all the brackets is Scribe. 

‎Scribe automates the documentation creation process to save you the trouble (and time) of creating and designing step-by-step instructions for every task and feature. On top of that, easy-to-use permissions enable anyone to view Scribes on any device or system. 

Here's how Scribe documents critical information in an interactive format.👇

‎Here's the best part: you can keep all your documents in a single place with Scribe Pages. Bring multiple Scribes together in a visually stunning process doc, complete with rich media, images, diagrams, and videos.

Try Scribe's documentation builder to get started for free!

6. Initial launch & test the document's validity 

Before launching your document to everyone, soft launch it to a smaller group for initial review. This is a healthy exercise to double-check your doc's validity and fine-tune it for a more fulfilling user experience. The soft launch will also reveal anything you might have missed when drafting.

Ask reviewers to analyze the doc from the intended audience's perspective. The goal should always be to make the information more accessible and engaging.

7. Audit & update the content consistently 

For the final practice, create a maintenance calendar for your technical documentation. As your product scales and processes change, some methods will naturally become outdated and invalid. Update outdated documentation to ensure end users or team members don't act on the wrong information.  

With every product update and release note, you must also update your documentation. Audit the documents at regular intervals to identify and remove duplicate content that keeps your documents as clean and concise as possible. 

‎With Scribe, you can make universal edits in seconds. After every audit or product update, you can tweak your Scribe to update wherever it's shared. Just go through your Workspace and click "Edit" on the guide you need. You'll never have to launch another "V2" for documentation updates again. 

FA‎Qs

What are the 6 principles of good documentation practices?

Good documentation practices are essential for creating clear, concise, and effective technical documentation. Here are six principles to guide your documentation strategies:

1. Clarity and simplicity: Write documentation using clear and simple language that's easy to understand for both technical and non-technical users.
2. Consistency: Consistent formatting, terminology and style help users navigate and understand the documentation.
3. Accuracy: Documentation should be accurate, up to date, and reflect the current state of the product or system.
4. Well-organized: Clear headings and subheadings are easier to navigate and search.
5. Accessibility: Easily accessible in multiple formats and with features like hyperlinks to related resources and search functionality.
6. User-centric: User documentation should focus on the needs and goals of users, provide answers to common questions, and incorporate user feedback.

What are the most common types of IT documentation?

The types of technical documentation will vary depending on the specific needs of your business, but the some of the most common include:

• System documentation: Describes hardware and software components and their interactions in an IT system.
• Process documentation: Processes and procedures for operating and maintaining IT systems.
• End-user documentation: Easy-to-understand guides and instructions for using IT systems and applications.
• Onboarding training: Used for developer onboarding and to train new developers.
• Knowledge base: Repository of information including FAQs, troubleshooting guides and how-to articles.
• Security documentation: Necessary security measures, IT policies and procedures for protecting IT systems and data.
• Compliance documentation: Demonstrates compliance with relevant regulations.
• Project-based technical documentation: Details the plans and progress of IT projects.
• Product roadmaps: High-level plans that outline the vision and direction of a product over time. Roadmaps are a guiding strategic document and a plan for executing the product development strategy.
• Vendor documentation: Information about IT products and services from third-party vendors.
• Requirement document (RD): Documents the requirements of any type of product or system. Functional requirements describe what the product or system should do, while non-functional requirements describe how the product or system should perform (e.g., security, performance, usability). Also includes user stories and use cases.
• Product requirement document (PRD): A specific type of requirements document that is used to describe the requirements of a software product.
• Code documentation: A collection of code samples and code comments explaining how code works and how to use it. Code documentation is an essential part of any development project, as it helps developers to understand and maintain the source code and use it effectively.

What are the 10 factors to consider while creating technical documentation?

Keep these 10 IT documentation best practices in mind when creating your technical documents to enhance usability and user satisfaction.

1. Audience: Understand the target audience personas to meet their specific needs and technical expertise.
2. Clear objectives: Define the objectives of the documentation to structure the content and address the purpose of technical documentation.
3. Organization and structure: Use headings, subheadings, and a logical flow of information for easy navigation and comprehension.
4. Maintain consistency in terminology, formatting, and style for enhanced readability.
5. Use visual content: Incorporate diagrams, screenshots, and illustrations to aid understanding of complex concepts and procedures.
6. Keep the documentation concise and to the point to avoid information overload and improve readability.
7. Accessibility: Ensure the documentation is stored in an easily accessible, organized location.
8. Version control: Implement version control tools for easy tracking and managing updates and revisions.
9. Collect feedback: Encourage and incorporate user and customer feedback for improvement and enhanced usability.
10. Regular updates: Update the documentation to reflect changes in the product or technology for relevance and accuracy.

Cr‎eate interactive & brand-aligned documentation 

Technical documentation can convert: 

• Potential leads to paying customers and 
• Customers to brand advocates.

It's also the key to unlocking better team collaboration. The more precise and accurate your process documentation, the stronger the impact. 

With this article's seven technical documentation best practices, you're all set to create comprehensive documentation for your business. 

Remember that your technical documentation process is incomplete (and ineffective) without a good tool to deliver all the information. Thankfully, you don't have to look far for a solid tool—Scribe can work wonders. Try it today and see for yourself!