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Learn Documenting / Documenting Projects

This section focuses on how to document projects.

What is a Project?

A project is work effort that results in delivered results that are tangible in some way, including creating data, defining and implementing processes, developing and releasing software, etc. A project often includes governance such as scope, schedule, management, and other resources.

Rather than delve into the area of pure project management, this page focuses on projects that are a collection of the topics discussed elsewhere in this overall document, for example an open source software project that is an umbrella for multiple programs, APIs, documents, etc.

Project Documentation Fundamentals

Project documentation must be visible to appropriate people, organized, and provide links to other documentation.

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Project Documentation Options

Options for documenting projects depend on the details and scope of the project.

Software Project

Documentation for software projects will for the most part consist of documentation for each software tool. For example, follow the recommendations for Documenting Software. However, it may also be necessary to create umbrella software project documentation that sits above several software tools.

  • Use built-in features of GitHub for a software projects, starting with basic README.md file on the repository, then consider using GitHub Pages static website using Jeckyll or MkDocs.
  • If GitHub Pages are not used directly, host the documentation to a location other than GitHub, such as Amazon S3 static website.

Consulting Project

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Documentation Approach Decision

Consider the following questions when deciding which documentation approach to use:

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