Developing documentation remotely With the COVID-19 virus pandemic changing the way companies apply work from home policies, a Docs-as-Code approach to documentation facilitates remote collaboration on a larger scale. Using Gitlab or Github as a documentation development tool helps technical writers and SMEs work together on complex documentation in a way that is not affected largely on whether they are together in an office or not. The theory behind this is that we treat a document as a piece of code (or text). In software development we have DevOps, which is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops) that aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps) By replacing software as the core output of DevOps with documentation, we now have a docs-as-code approach that leverages all the same developer-centric tools and workflows to champion rapid and decentralized documentation development. The easiest way to do this is to store the documentation directly inside a Gitlab environment where we can immediately start using functions such as: * Issue trackers / Kanban boards to drive content development * Branching and merging to handle a near unlimited number of collaborators * Version control to ensure ISO and internal compliance * Organizational wide text search to know where content is * Enterprise level scalability and reducing the number if IT systems to manage * Organizational wide snippets and single sourced content to ensure content is consistent * Templating and the ability to make changes instantly across all documents - for when names and important changes at an organizational level * Automatic release and deployment to online portals Combining this with a strong text based and open source documentation tool such as Sphinx, we have a free, scalable and powerful documentation management system. [Work Instruction CMS](https://gitlab.com/demo-docs-as-code/qms/wi5014-laser-etching-machine)
2 minute read | Concept

Developing documentation remotely

With the COVID-19 virus pandemic changing the way companies apply work from home policies, a Docs-as-Code approach to documentation facilitates remote collaboration on a larger scale.

Using Gitlab or Github as a documentation development tool helps technical writers and SMEs work together on complex documentation in a way that is not affected largely on whether they are together in an office or not.

The theory behind this is that we treat a document as a piece of code (or text). In software development we have DevOps, which is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and information-technology operations (Ops) that aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality.1

By replacing software as the core output of DevOps with documentation, we now have a docs-as-code approach that leverages all the same developer-centric tools and workflows to champion rapid and decentralized documentation development. The easiest way to do this is to store the documentation directly inside a Gitlab environment where we can immediately start using functions such as:

Combining this with a strong text based and open source documentation tool such as Sphinx, we have a free, scalable and powerful documentation management system.

Example

Work Instruction CMS

See also

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