Posts on Daryl J. White

Documentation as the Knowledgeable Colleague

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a specific feeling you get when documentation actually works.

It’s not relief, exactly. It’s more like the feeling of asking a question and getting a straight answer from someone who knows what they’re talking about. Someone who anticipated what you needed, skipped the parts you already knew, and told you what to do without talking down to you.

The Spokes of the Wheel

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Adam Dubec on Pexels.

If you look at a standard corporate org chart, you’ll see neat little boxes. Engineering is over here, Product is over there, Sales is on the other side of the building (or the virtual workspace), and Support is tucked away in the corner.

Documentation is the ultimate QA test

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by olia danilevich on Pexels.

There is a persistent myth that technical writers sit around waiting for a developer to “finish” a feature so we can write the documentation. In this version of reality, we are the stenographers of the software world, recording what happened after the dust has settled.

Choosing a docs tool

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Brett Jordan at Pexels.

In the Write the Docs Slack community, folks often ask how to go about deciding what documentation tool or set of tools is the right one to use. I have taken to replying often with a series of questions, instead of answering.

Why the Socratic method? Because tooling for docs is a very, very circumstance-specific choice. No one answer is correct. As I have often said in Write the Docs and elsewhere, I firmly believe that a good technical writer can create great docs with pretty much any toolset. Yes, even Microsoft Word, though we might shudder while doing so.

What technical writing can do

Mon, 22 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels.

Curious about what a technical writer can do for you?

Here are twenty-five things you might find a technical writer doing in their job on any given day:

Interviewing a subject matter expert to learn more about what they are writing about.

This might be a product manager, project lead, developer, customer, salesperson, developer advocate, end user, nearly anyone who might touch or use what we are a writing about.

GitHub Tips and Tricks

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Photo credit: by Sara Kurfeß at Unsplash.

I started using Git and GitHub for docs in 2019. It’s been a slow build, but I’ve finally started to learn some helpful ways of going about things. So there are two GitHub specific tips I want to share with you that have helped me out in my day to day.

Choose where a repo’s notifications go

For the longest time, I just let all of my notifications go to whichever default email address I had defined. This meant that all of my GitHub notifications wound up going to my work email, because work had the majority of the notifications.

Caring for knowledge

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Pixabay at Pexels.

Why is good knowledge care critical?

Every business, small or large, has a body of knowledge around its existence.

The business has one or more products or services it sells. It has processes for how to obtain, create, or use the products or services. It has sales documents and collateral. There are accounting charts and customer lists. How to manuals and vendors. Hire onboarding and competitive analyses. The knowledge goes on and on.

Six characteristics of good docs

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Samson Katt on Pexels.

Good docs have (at least) six key characteristics:

Findable

For documentation to be worth the time spent creating it, the user needs to be able to get to those docs when a problem or curiosity creates a need for information. The best docs do nobody any good if they can’t put their hands or eyes on them when they need them.

Leaving Well

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Alexas Fotos from Pexels.

There are many flavors of technical writing. Mine is software.

One of the constants of any software team is the change that comes with employee churn. People find new opportunities by joining your team. People find new opportunities and leave your team for elsewhere.

Editing and Gathering Feedback

Thu, 23 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels.

I would like to thank the tech writers in the Write the Docs Slack’s #lone-writer channel for bringing these ideas to the top of my mind.

Everyone suffers from a bias of familiarity when looking at our docs. Once you read something once, the next time you read it the mind can anticipate and insert what it remembers and expects to be there. This happens whether the expected word or phrase or punctuation is there or not.

What good are docs?

Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.

Are docs a good investment?

One of the challenges every documentarian faces is justifying the investment in docs.

Whether that investment is

salary
training and professional development
expanded doc team
tooling
dev help for site development

It can feel like we technical writers are always battling it out for the company’s money. And, often, the experience is that the money for conferences or books or a new team member goes to other teams instead. Teams that have a clearer line of sight from work to the bottom line of the company’s P&L statement.

Community

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels.

Technical writing can be an introvert’s dream. (I know, I am one!) That said, there are two communities that every tech writer needs to develop to thrive in our work.

Network of co-workers and subject matter experts
Other tech writers for support and professional development

Why are these communities vital? And how does a tech writer go about developing them?

Are good enough docs really good enough?

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Brett Jordan at Pexels.

What makes a good technical document?

A good technical article, document, or topic has a few key points that make it stand out:

It understands the user and has empathy for the situation that brought them here, now.

Don’t miss this point. It’s key.

A good technical article has to be inside the mind of the user that’s come to the article.

Is your information architecture showing cracks?

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Ron Lach from Pexels.

You can’t hang out with knowledge management platforms for long without realizing that their structure, or, should I say, “architecture,” gets dated.

It cracks. It goes stale.

Stale knowledge, a litany

Knowledge stops functioning the way it did at the beginning.

The roads go awry.

There are turnabouts everywhere.

Dead ends.

So many dead ends.

So you've decided to convert your docs

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Photo by Mat Brown from Pexels.

So you’ve done the work and you are ready to convert your docs from one tool to another.

I, too, have done this. Actually, I am on my third time through doing such a massive undertaking. This time, as a lone writer having to maintain docs in both the old platform and the new.