Every code change necessitates a corresponding update to documentation, especially in fast-moving software development environments. When code and documentation drift out of sync, the result is poor user experience, increased support tickets, and damaged trust in your API.
The key to solving this perennial problem is adopting methodologies for documentation, treating docs as a critical part of your product.
1. Docs as Code (DaC): Leveraging Your Existing Toolchain
The “Docs as Code” approach defines documentation content as source code, utilizing plain text files (like Markdown) and leveraging the professional tools developers already use.
The Core Workflow
DaC relies heavily on established software engineering workflows to ensure documentation updates are integrated seamlessly with code changes:
Version Control is Non-Negotiable: Documentation content is stored in repositories (e.g., GitHub) and managed using version control systems (Git). Git is robust enough to track every symbol, ensuring you maintain a complete history of changes. Docwiz augments that experience by giving a rich text editor for creating those markdown files that can be committed to the repository of your choice in just one click.
PRs for Review and Approval: Changes are submitted via pull requests (PRs) or merge requests. This process, common in software development, allows reviewers (including subject matter experts or other technical writers) to discuss and approve modifications before the content is merged and published. This structured approval process layer in DocuWiz ensures a “doc” like experience for reviewers as well as writers while still maintaining the markdown files as source material. This saves time of context switching compared to traditional manual review methods.
Automated Site Generation: Changes pushed to the repository are automatically processed by Docuwiz’s site generation engineer to build and publish the documentation as a website, allowing technical writers to focus purely on content. Docuwiz also has an additional layer of role-based access control over the publishing process, allowing documentation owners to comment on their feedback as well as move a draft to a published state after their feedback has been incorporated.
By integrating documentation into these existing software engineering workflows, Docuwiz lowers the barrier for contributions from the engineering team and accelerates the process of getting accurate information to users.
2. Automate the Reference, Standardize the Content
Maintaining accuracy at scale requires maximizing automation, particularly for repetitive content like API endpoints and parameters.
API Reference Generation
The API reference site should be automated and autogenerated with minimal manual effort. Docuwiz leverages specifications like OpenAPI or Swagger can extract definitions, ensuring the reference documentation reflects the source of truth—the code itself.
However, remember that API documentation extends beyond the reference. It must include conceptual explanations, tutorials, and how-to guides that describe how to use the operations in sequence to achieve business goals. Docuwiz enables exactly that by augmenting your API reference site with additionalnal written guides that add context.
Pipeline Quality Checks
Before publishing, DocuWiz runs automated content checks:
With Docuwiz, quality is enforced not just by human review, but through automation integrated into the workflow (Docs as Code). Our Site generation engine automatically builds and publishes documentation from the source files, and incorporates the following quality checks:
Style Guide Enforcement: It programmatically enforces your organizational style guide for consistency of Open API specifications
Validity Checks: Beyond Organizational Style guides, the validity checkers in Docuwiz flag problematic areas for a quick fix
Enhancements: Even after the validity checks or Style guide adherence, a lot of details of an OAS file require elaborate description writing and explanation of various elements like parameters. Docuwiz’s AI copilot suggests texts that can be filled in by writers just by a simple click.
Conclusion: Make the Technical Writer an Accelerator
To maintain synchronous documentation, technical writers must be fully integrated into the development lifecycle, not treated as an afterthought or a cleanup crew.
Bringing Writers and Reviewersewers Together: Docuwiz, through its editor, acts as an abstraction layer where Technical writers document and documentation owners review documentation without dabbling in messy code files.
Programmatic Checks: Docuwiz enables technical writers to enhance existing API files and guides, and enhance them using linters, validity checkers, and AI enhancements
Version Control System. Content Approval, and publishing from repository files is taken care by the Docuwiz site generation engine while synchronization & context is retained by the Version control system.
By adopting Docs as Code for your workflow, leveraging automation for reference material, and implementing automated validation, you ensure documentation remains an accelerator—not a handbrake—for your product delivery.