developer-docs-planning

Developer Docs Planning

Use this skill to decide what developer documentation to create before drafting. It maps user needs to content types, scope, outline, ownership, release context, research work, and decision records.

This skill is derived from Docs for Developers: An Engineer's Field Guide to Technical Writing, especially Chapter 2, "Planning your documentation." It is expanded with paraphrased guidance from Christopher Gales and the Splunk Documentation Team's The Product Is Docs: Writing Technical Documentation in a Product Development Group, especially Chapter 2, "Agile," Chapter 6, "Documentation Decisions," Chapter 13, "Research for Technical Writers," Chapter 14, "Scenario-driven Information Development," and Chapter 22, "Working with Product Management." Do not copy book prose into user outputs. Source: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4842-7217-6

Quick Start

1. Load guidelines.md to choose the smallest useful reference set.
2. Confirm user goal, audience, product surface, and release context.
3. Choose content types by user task, not by internal org structure.
4. Use workflows/create-doc-plan.md for a full plan.
5. Use the specialized workflows when the task is a decision, research pass, scenario plan, or Agile integration.
6. Output an outline with doc type, purpose, owner, source of truth, dependencies, and validation.

Default Output

When planning documentation, return:

1. Audience and goal - who the docs serve and what they must accomplish.
2. Content type decisions - recommended docs and why each belongs.
3. Documentation outline - pages or sections with purpose and ordering.
4. Decision or research basis - known evidence, assumptions, and unresolved questions.
5. Source-of-truth map - code, API schema, product owner, support data, or design source.
6. Release and review plan - owners, approvals, and timing.
7. Open questions - decisions blocking accurate docs.

Contents

| Need | Start Here |

|------|------------|

| Understand doc types | references/core/knowledge.md |

| Apply planning rules | references/core/knowledge.md |

| See plan examples | references/core/knowledge.md |

| Create a documentation plan | workflows/create-doc-plan.md |

| Make a documentation decision | workflows/make-doc-decision.md |

| Research a feature before writing | workflows/research-feature-docs.md |

| Plan scenario-driven docs | workflows/plan-scenario-docs.md |

| Integrate docs with Agile work | workflows/integrate-docs-agile.md |

| Route by task | guidelines.md |

Core Posture

• Let user tasks choose the content type.
• Keep each doc anchored to one primary goal.
• Treat plans as lightweight engineering artifacts, not ceremony.
• Expose decisions, assumptions, and source gaps early.
• If the documentation plan feels like a maze, consider whether the product or information architecture is too complex.