Documentation is an important part of an organization’s public relations. It can be the gateway through which someone first interacts with your organization, for example, when vetting and installing your software. It can also be where users seek help when they have issues or questions. In these critical moments, the impressions that users get from your documentation reflect back on your software and organization.

Creating and maintaining quality documentation is vital if you want to create goodwill with your users and not frustrate them. This task does not have to be a complicated burden for your team. By using open source style guides with the open source Vale prose linter tool, and integrated with GitLab, GitHub, other platforms, or even a local IDE, any team, even one without a dedicated technical writer or documentation specialist, can improve its written documentation. LINBIT® Documentation Specialist, Michael Troutman, will share how in this talk and demonstration.

This talk will include stories drawn from the adoption of these resources and tools by the LINBIT team. It will also include repeatable instructions that you can apply to your own journey to improve the quality and consistency of your documentation. You will not need technical skills to follow the scope of the talk but familiarity with concepts such as version control software workflows and pipelines can help you to appreciate some of the details.