Docs for Developers: An Engineer's Field Guide to Technical Writing (Paperback)

1. Getting Started

2. Researching documentation

1. Understanding your users

2. Cultivating empathy

3. Understanding user desires, user needs, and company needs

4. Recruiting users for research

3. Research methods 

1. Reading code comments

2. Trying it out

Friction logs

3. Running diverse and inclusive focus groups and interviews

4. User journey mapping

4. Identifying and working with stakeholders

1. Finding your experts

2. Collaborative documentation development

5. Learning from existing content

1. The value of design documents

2. Finding examples in industry

1. Defining your initial set of content

2. Deciding your minimum viable documentation 

3. Drafting test and acceptance criteria 

READMEs

1. Setting yourself up for writing success

2. Who is this for? Personas, requirements, content types

3. Definition of done

4. How to iterate

Tools and tips for writing rough drafts

1. Understanding your needs

2. Choosing your writing tools (handwriting, text-only, productivity/measurement writing tools)

3. “Hacks” to get started drafting content

Notes and warnings

1. Purpose of a template

2. How to derive a template from existing docs

How to take templates into text 

Editing content for publication

1. Determine destination

2. Editing tools (Grammarly, linters, etc)

3. Declaring good enough

Structuring sets of documentation

1. Where content types live

2. Concepts, tutorials and reference documentation 

3. Code comments

4. API specifications

READMEs

5. Guides

6. Release notes

1. Content information architecture styles

2. Designing for search

3. Creating clear, well-lit paths through content

1. Integrating code samples

2. When and why to use code samples

3. Creating concise, usable, maintainable samples

4. Standardising your samples

1. When your documentation may need visual content

2. Making your visual content accessible 

3. Integrating screenshots, diagrams

4. Videos

1. Structural Quality

2. Functional Quality

3. Process Quality

Drawing conclusions from document metrics

1. Deciding on a governance structure

2. Writing an effective Code of Conduct

1. Code licenses

2. Content licences

Building and enforcing a style guide

1. Assigning document owners

2. Performing freshness checks on content

Responding to documentation issues

1. Separating documentation issues from product issues

2. Responding to users

1. Automating API and reference content

2. Using doc linters