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Software Engineering Documentation Best Practice? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by Schal330@lemmy.world to c/programming@programming.dev

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Hey all, I'm still a junior dev with years of experience in IT. One of the things I've noticed since making the switch is that (at least where I work) documentation is inconsistent.

Things I encounter include incomplete documentation, outdated documentation and written process details that have assumed knowledge which makes it difficult for junior Devs to pick up.

I've had a search and a lot of what is out there talks more about product and how to document that SDLC rather than best practice in writing and organising documents against the actual software engineering and its processes.

Does anyone have any good sources or suggestions on how I could look to try and begin to improve documentation within my team?

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[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Bare minimum place to start: See if you can get the team to agree that these documents should exist in every project root folder:

README.md - What is this even for? Audience: Managers.
CONTRIBUTING.md - What steps are needed to build this? What steps are needed to be able to run the tests? Audience: Developers.
CHANGELOG.txt - Describes the contents of every tagged release. Audience: end users.

Stretch goal: pick a spot (readme is fine) and make a list of sources (data in) and sinks (data out). Include contact information for whoever can reset the credentials or fix the firewall.