The Things You Don't Want to Write - Documentation
summary
Argues that documentation must be written alongside code as part of the definition of done, with commits and pull requests that include docs; demonstrates using Markdown + mermaid diagrams, keeping docs in git, and publishing to an Azure DevOps wiki so business and devs can edit and peer‑review. Reports teams copy the workflow, new hires boot up from the docs without hand-holding, and the approach noticeably reduces knowledge drain and onboarding time.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Talk introduction
- 2:06Speaker intro
- 4:30What documentation is
- 8:45Documentation pitfalls
- 11:52Team documentation
- 14:19Integrating documentation into Agile workflows
- 19:18Doc tooling approaches
- 21:10Good docs properties
- 24:17Updating fast docs
- 26:02Knowledge loss handling
- 29:14Docs in code vs separate
- 30:37Change logs and versioning
- 33:07Doc writers' role
- 36:40Demo: Azure DevOps docs
- 44:48Mermaid diagrams
- 46:54Closing and Q&A
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