


So how do you write appropriate documentation for a project and share it with the right people? What is successful community documentation? This is important when coordinating people toward a common goal and preserving knowledge as people move on to different projects. This is especially true considering that projects tend to get bigger over time.ĭocumentation can be a single source of truth within a group or a company. Things are developing too fast, or they're not developing fast enough.īut good documentation remains the best communication tool for groups and projects. They don't write because they are too busy making the project exist. The development team doesn't write documentation because of the "it's obvious for me, so it's obvious to everyone" trap.

Users don't read documentation because it's inconvenient, it goes out of date very quickly, there's too much, or there's not enough. In other words, documentation isn't only about documentation.Įstablishing good documentation can be difficult, though. Community is what drives an open source project, and documentation is one of the foundational blocks for building a community. What distinguishes successful and sustainable projects from those that disappeared into the void? Spoiler - it's community.
