Steps to Create Technical Documentation Lles Ferrando
Steps to Create Technical Documentation
Technical documentation refers to any document that explains the use, functionality, creation, or architecture of a product. Think of it as a nuts-and-bolts “how to” guide for your users, new hires, administrators, and anyone else who needs to know how your product works. Technical documentation can quickly go from “here’s how to use this if you’re unfamiliar and have limited experience” to “here’s an unedited transcript of everything our developer told us about this obscure application of our API.” One’s going to get you using the product right away, while the other will make you go cross-eyed. Technical documentation isn’t just about capturing information. It’s about presenting it in a way that’s easy to read, usable, and actually helpful for your audience. So if you don’t know where to start, here’s our short guide to making technical documentation that’s actually helpful.
When, why, and how to properly use technical documentation
Technical documentation helps an intended audience use your product, understand your processes, and get unstuck. Whether that audience is end-users, administrators, colleagues, or technicians doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it’s clear, searchable, and helpful for them. Great technical documentation empowers your users, not frustrates them. It’s an integral part of not just customer support, but brand building and trust. Users seek it out when they’re most in need. And if it’s not there for them, they’ll start looking for alternatives.
- End-user support: This means things like user guides, release notes, online help systems, training programs, or operating procedures—anything that helps users use your product.
- Marketing support: Anything that’s product-focused and used to market your company (like explainer videos, presentations, or technical landing pages)
- Development support: This could be functional and technical specifications, software development guides, or simply procedures and tools to help your developers do their jobs.
- Organization support: Information about your company, structure, procedures, workflows, policies, and anything else teammates need to know to do their jobs.
How to plan, write, and deliver technical documentation that works
So how do you create these clear, concise, wonderfully useful documents? First, you need to decide who is going to be responsible for them. Technical documentation is usually either written by a subject matter expert (i.e. someone who knows what they’re talking about), or a technical writer who’s been trained to translate complicated product knowledge into content that’s more easily understood by the end users. Once you’ve put your team together, writing technical documents comes down to a few simple steps.
