Software documentation is a written piece of text or illustrations that come with computer software whose primary goal is to explain how it works and how to use it.

Depending on its format and the information it provides, this documentation can be used by a multitude of actors involved at different stages of the project, such as developers, quality assurance analysts, product owners, end-users and so on.

There are four main types of documentation:

1. Requirements documentation is usually created at the very beginning of a project and concerns everyone involved in the production of the software, from developers to end- users. Its goal is to specify what the software expectations are in terms of what it does or shall do, which includes functional requirements, hardware and software requirements, compatibility requirements, and so on.

2. Architecture documentation defines the high-level design of the software. Although it may suggest approaches for lower-level design, it contains zero to no code and focuses mainly on the components of the system, their roles, as well as the data and control flow among them.

3. Technical documentation is aimed at developers and testers. It focuses on describing the technical aspects of the software such as its routines, algorithms and APIs, and comes in different forms such as README files and API documents.

4. End-user documentation, also called a user guide, is a manual intended to assist users, administrators and support staff in using software. It may include written text with technical jargon kept to a minimum, screenshots and video tutorials.

In this lesson, we'll solely focus on writing the technical documentation of the application.

Writing a Readme file