Divio's documentation system

A while ago I encountered the Divio documentation system. I really like it for its distinction between different kinds of users and their needs. As a recovering consultant, I confess to also loving the quadrant diagram.

This system is a great starting point, but there are many possible extensions we can apply to it. I first saw this noted by Hillel Wayne in his article: Beyond the Four-document model, in which he describes his vision for "Conceptual Overview" and "Examples" areas of documentation. At the end he briefly mentions a few more: "FAQs", "Troubleshooting" and "Best practices". A colleague of mine at Gradle also mentioned that she used "Cheat sheet" as an extension.

Regardless of what particular flavour of this model you use, this more principled way of structuring documentation is certainly a step forward compared to what we have tolerated until now. I find it heartening to see the high level of adoption and passion for better documentation models amongst software maintainers.

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Created on 2022-08-05

Updated on 2022-08-05