Context and research

Eventually, TraceLink intends to allow third parties to also develop their own apps on our new platform, so these third parties can leverage the data on our network. To get ahead of the documentation needs for these developers, the Technical Communications team needed to create documentation for how to develop apps on the platform, which we had not done before. This documentation could then be leveraged to onboard new internal TraceLink developers until the platform was ready for third-party developers. 

For this project, I informally researched other company’s app developer documentation to determine the basics of what we needed to provide. While I did not have prior experience with app developer documentation, I also talked to multiple developers on the different product teams to determine their needs and frustrations.

Information architecture and content management

I defined the IA in a way that stayed as consistent as possible with our other documentation while also leveraging industry standards. I also developed a content management strategy that allowed multiple writers to easily contribute to the same knowledge base that provided information for multiple apps, which was not something we had done before. I then trained the other writers on this strategy, led the initial project to create the knowledge base, and reviewed the final result to ensure it adhered to our styles and standards. 

Future vision

In the years since, I’ve gained more experience with app developers and their documentation needs, and there are many things I would change about this project now. However, third-party developer customers were deprioritized, so we have not had a chance to revisit and improve this knowledge base.