A hands-on practice on building documentation structure

Realizing that documentation is an un-splittable part of a product is a positive step, and then the following approach is to build its structure.

This article's focus is not on deciding to build a documentation structure or not, but on how to build it.
I expect that this article may provide you workable instructions that you can follow.

If you a budding technical writer:
This article may give a broad view of the whole documentation structure as a whole. Though it would not touch the detailed part of writing techniques, it would guide you on planning both your content strategy and content topics.

If you are a product manager who plans to optimize your documentation:
This article shares insights on the concepts and process of structuring a documentation system. It also aims to lower the construction cost by understanding the business needs and the pros and cons of different tools.

The Priority issue

When looking into documentation structure for the first time, most of us would think the most urgent issue to decide is deciding which tool to use, or where to publish the content, or even more detailed aspects, such as version control, content reuse.

This article introduces the process of this documentation architecture. The building blocks lay their foundation on one another like a pyramid. Here is a quick view of the flow:

1. Set your target
2. Build information layout
3. Select a writing strategy
4. Build contents
5. Render the display

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Five processes of building documentation structure

Building your documentation structure

1.Set your target

Setting targets is the foundation of the whole structure. It helps you to understand for what purpose you write.

Why is this important?

A documentation structure should be able to generate its unique value. A good way to achieve this goal is to design the documentation structure as a product.

How to set targets:

• know who the stakeholders
• know your readers
• set up your content targets

#######Know your stakeholders
Usually your stakeholders are not documentation users, but they cares about its value.
The analysis of your stakeholders involoves these steps:

1. List the stakeholders by poistion with a description of their interests

So first who should read this article?