What to document

If you are starting an entire set of documentation or a major feature from scratch, you might be wondering what to work on first and how much documentation you need.

At the risk of repeating myself, documentation is an iterative process, especially if you are a small team or undertaking documentation as part of another role. It’s almost impossible for you to document everything that a product might need at once. Unless you work in a sector where completeness and full accuracy are essential at launch, such as medical, sensitive industrial, and so on, then it’s unlikely you need everything documented at once.

So, where do you start? And how do you proceed after you start? If you have some existing metrics or roadmap that informs you of an order to document a product, then follow it, but in reality, it’s unlikely you will have any existing guidance, and it’s mostly “up to you.”

My general advice is to start at the beginning...