Documentation Guidelines

Overview

Effective documentation is essential for maintaining clarity, consistency, and efficiency across our enterprise software projects. It serves as a single source of truth that enables developers, engineers, project managers, and support personnel to work more effectively. Well-structured documentation reduces ambiguity, accelerates onboarding, streamlines troubleshooting, and ensures continuity even as team members change.

Purpose and Goals

The primary goal of documentation is to enhance collaboration, knowledge sharing, and operational resilience. Our documentation should:

Provide clear, concise, and up-to-date information about systems, processes, and best practices.
Facilitate troubleshooting and issue resolution by offering structured guidance (e.g., runbooks, playbooks).
Improve developer productivity by maintaining well-documented codebases (e.g., README.md files).
Ensure consistency and alignment across project teams by defining standards for JIRA descriptions and task documentation.
Support compliance, security, and governance requirements with well-maintained records of system behaviors and changes.

Who Benefits?

Developers & Engineers – Gain quick access to technical insights, coding standards, and troubleshooting steps.
Project Managers – Ensure project alignment, track progress efficiently, and improve communication between teams.
Support Teams – Resolve incidents faster with structured playbooks and runbooks.
New Team Members – Accelerate onboarding with centralized and well-organized documentation.
Stakeholders – Gain visibility into project status, decisions, and key technical details.

By establishing clear documentation guidelines, we aim to foster a culture where information is easily accessible, processes are well-documented, and teams can work with confidence, efficiency, and agility.

General Considerations

Some things to think about when creating any documentation:

Always aim for one source of truth. Having duplicate information results in confusion and additional work keeping both up to date which also discourages team involvement. Worst of all two separate updates my be applied to different documents, so both become out of date and it becomes quickly impossible to know what part of each document is current, rendering both effectively useless.
Link to existing documentation whenever possible. This ties into the above point, rather than duplicate information contained in a section of another document, provide a link or reference to that document.
Remember your audience. Overly simple, convoluted or instructions that assume specific knowledge may be unusable. Remember your target audience and their potential (lack of) experience in what you are describing, and document at an appropriate level. A document intended for a general support technician may need to go into more detail than a document intended for an experienced developer. Likewise a document intended for new team members will also require an extra appropriate level of detail.
Documentation should be reviewed by members of the target audiences.

Types of Documentation

The following is a list of documents engineers should consider as a bare minimum for our applications and services during development

1. Runbooks

Purpose: Step-by-step instructions for handling operational tasks, including deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting.
Audience: Engineers, DevOps, Support Teams.
Example Topics: Restarting services, database migrations, system recovery procedures.

2. Playbooks

Purpose: Predefined responses to specific incidents or events to ensure consistent resolution.
Audience: Support Teams, Engineers.
Example Topics: Handling service outages, mitigating security threats, responding to performance issues.

3. README.md Files

Purpose: Provide essential project information for developers interacting with the codebase.
Audience: Developers, Engineers.
Example Topics: Project setup, dependencies, development guidelines, contributing instructions.

4. JIRA Descriptions

Purpose: Ensure tasks, user stories, and issues are well-documented for effective project management.
Audience: Developers, Project Managers, QA, Business Analysts.
Example Topics: Clear acceptance criteria, impact analysis, test cases, related dependencies.

Additional Documentation & Resources

The following is a more general list of documentation that the engineering team will not necessarily be directly responsible for, but that should be present and referred to during design, development, testing and/or support tasks. These will largely be the responsibility of external teams, but some of the information contained in them may be specific to individual projects and so be detailed individually, or generally referenced in the above documents, as necessary.

5. Architectural & System Design Documentation

High-Level Architecture Diagrams – Visual representation of system components, interactions, and dependencies.
API Documentation – Specifications, request/response examples, authentication details.
Data Flow Diagrams – How data moves between services, databases, and external systems.

6. Development Guidelines

Coding Standards & Best Practices – Maintainable, scalable, and readable code.
Version Control & Git Guidelines – Branching strategies, commit message conventions, merge processes.
Dependency Management – Safe and efficient handling of third-party libraries.

7. Deployment & Infrastructure Documentation

CI/CD Pipeline Documentation – Automated testing, deployment steps, rollback procedures.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Documentation – Guidelines for Terraform, Ansible, or other IaC tools.
Cloud Services Documentation – Configurations and best practices for Azure (or other cloud platforms).

8. Incident & Support Documentation

Troubleshooting Guides – Common issues and resolutions, log analysis, debugging steps.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) & Incident Response Plans – Response expectations, escalation paths.
Monitoring & Alerting Documentation – Defined alerts, thresholds, and response steps.

9. Security & Compliance Documentation

Security Best Practices – Encryption standards, access controls, secure coding guidelines.
Access & Permissions Documentation – Who has access to systems and how permissions are granted.
Audit & Compliance Reports – Required documentation for regulatory compliance.

10. User & Stakeholder-Facing Documentation

End-User Guides – Documentation for business users or external clients (if applicable).
Change Logs & Release Notes – History of changes, fixes, and new features in each release.
Product Roadmaps & Feature Documentation – Planned and upcoming features with explanations.

11. Knowledge Base & FAQs

Common Questions & Answers – Growing knowledge base for frequently encountered challenges.
Internal Wiki or Glossary – Definitions of technical and domain-specific terms for easy reference.

Isn’t the Agile approach “No Documentation”?

This approach to documentation aligns well with Agile principles, particularly the Agile Manifesto's view that “working software over comprehensive documentation” does not mean no documentation but rather having the right level of documentation that supports collaboration, efficiency, and adaptability.

How This Documentation Approach Supports Agile

Agile Principle	How This Documentation Approach Fits
“Working software over comprehensive documentation”	Focuses on lightweight, practical, and frequently updated documentation rather than exhaustive, static documents.
“Responding to change over following a plan”	Encourages flexible documentation that evolves with the project rather than rigid, upfront planning.
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”	Documents such as playbooks, README files, and JIRA descriptions enable better collaboration while keeping processes lightweight.
“Customer collaboration over contract negotiation”	End-user guides and product roadmaps support continuous feedback and customer engagement.
“Just enough documentation”	Focuses on what is necessary to enable developers, support teams, and stakeholders without excessive overhead.

Agile Documentation Characteristics in This Approach

Concise & Purpose-Driven – Documents like README.md, runbooks, and playbooks provide actionable guidance instead of lengthy, outdated specifications.
Living Documentation – Maintained in wikis, code repositories, and JIRA tickets, ensuring updates are made as the project evolves.
Collaborative & Incremental – Encourages teams to update documentation continuously rather than at fixed milestones.
Automation Where Possible – Integrating documentation with CI/CD pipelines, API documentation generators (e.g., Swagger for OpenAPI), and monitoring tools reduces manual effort.

How to Strike the Right Balance

Avoid Over-Documenting – Unnecessary or overly detailed documentation slows down agility and adds maintenance overhead.
Prioritize Essential Knowledge – Focus on what helps the team deliver value, such as runbooks for incident resolution, coding standards, and architectural decisions.
Encourage Continuous Updates – Treat documentation as part of the development workflow, with regular updates and reviews in sprint cycles.

By keeping documentation lean, relevant, and integrated into daily work, this approach supports Agile teams in delivering high-quality software while reducing knowledge gaps and operational risks.

Conclusion

By maintaining clear and structured documentation, we ensure that all stakeholders—technical and non-technical—have the information they need. Comprehensive documentation improves efficiency, facilitates troubleshooting, and accelerates onboarding, helping teams work with confidence and agility.

All team members are encouraged to contribute to documentation and follow these guidelines to keep our knowledge base accurate and up to date.