docs.md

Purpose: Centralizing Knowledge and Streamlining Collaboration

The docs folder serves as a comprehensive knowledge base for our development team. By integrating essential documentation directly within our project's codebase, we foster a shared understanding and promote long-term maintainability.

Key Benefits

• Seamless Knowledge Transfer: Documentation lives alongside the code it references, ensuring everyone has immediate access to project history, design decisions, and best practices.
• Streamlined Onboarding: New developers can quickly grasp the project's rationale, structure, and processes by exploring the docs folder.
• Consistent Evolution: Version control tracks documentation changes alongside our code, providing a historical record of how our project and its understanding have matured.
• Focused Content: We can use Markdown or plain text formats for ease of editing, keeping the emphasis on valuable knowledge rather than complex tooling.

Advantages over External Document Stores

While tools like Notion or Google Docs excel in certain areas, embedding engineering-centric documents within version control offers distinct advantages:

• Direct Context: Information remains tightly coupled to the code it relates to, reducing the need to search across multiple platforms.
• Reduced Fragmentation: This approach minimizes the risk of discrepancies between code and outdated external documentation.
• Offline Accessibility: Documentation remains available even without an internet connection.
• Developer Familiarity: Using Markdown or plain text formats aligns with developers' existing workflows and tools.

Recommendations for an Effective Knowledge Base

• Descriptive Naming: Choosing a name like knowledge-base or team-docs clearly conveys the folder's purpose for all team members.
• Structured Organization: Create subfolders to categorize documents logically. Examples include:
  • technical-decisions: Records of architectural choices and design rationale.
  • onboarding: Step-by-step guides for new developers to get up to speed.
  • processes: Outlines of development workflows, testing practices, code review guidelines, etc.
• Clear Navigation: Include a main README.md with a brief description of the docs folder and a table of contents linking to key subfolders and documents.
• Regular Updates: Encourage team members to contribute to and maintain documentation, ensuring it remains accurate and relevant.

Example Structure:

docs/
  README.md
  technical-decisions/
     architecture.md
     database-choices.md
  onboarding/
     developer-setup.md
     project-overview.md
  processes/
      code-review-guidelines.md
      testing-workflows.md
  ...