Documentation - Practical Practices & Ideas

This document aims to give some practical ideas and advice for Internet startups and Internet development shops as to what they should consider documenting when they're writing 'documentation'. There's probably a lot of things on here that you don't need to document in your particular case, and there's probably a lot of things that aren't on here that you do need to document.

Generally speaking, I like to keep written documentation simple. Most documentation should be inline in your code or configuration files… for example, instead of documenting every apache configuration setting you have used, just say somewhere “we use apache; more documentation is in the config file at /etc/httpd.conf ”.

I find it easiest to keep all of this documentation on a wiki accessible to everyone.

• Statement of Work / Vision Doc
• Requirements Document / Requirements Wireframes
• UI Wireframes
• Database Schema (may just be SQL, or may be a visual model)

• Statement of Work
• Creative Brief
• Site Design Wireframes
• Competitive Sites Brief

• Code/Website Deployment Process
• Network Infrastructure Map - Physical & Virtual (if appropriate)
• Server Setup Procedure
• Application Software Configuration
• Naming Conventions

• QA Process/To Do List
• Naming Conventions

• Step-By-Step for any common procedures

• Standardized Customer Service Procedures

• Coding Standards
• Source Checkout Setup & How-To

• Data Formats
• API Calls

• Key Contacts - All Vendors + Internal Contact Person
• Disaster Mitigation Plans - Specific How Tos & To Do Lists for Disaster Scenarios

• Local watering holes; places to go