2 minute read | Concept

Applying a Docs-as-Code approach to QMS

Creating documentation correctly in the first instance removes the need for secondary Quality Management Systems (QMS) or Document Management System (DMS) software. Integrating Gitlab as a DevOps tool for documentation is a lightweight and scalable way to enhance a QMS.

A QMS needs to include a robust way to manage and distribute organizational content such as the quality manual, quality policies objectives, work procedures, instructions, data management records, internal processes etc. Traditional tools revolving around standalone MS word documents uploaded as a PDF to a DMS or tool such as SharePoint employ decades old workflows that are expensive, mostly unintuitive and bottleneck businesses.

Using an online knowledge base to distribute your quality documentation makes content more accessible and functional. As briefly mentioned in Creating technical documentation, we can use Jekyll to generate content for us and distribute it to websites (internally or externally). This gives us a nice and polished front-end look. More importantly however, it also gives us a hugely powerful backend that essentially replaces traditional QMS / DMS software. It replaces a QMS by leveraging Gitlab’s integrated DevOps features, and replaces a DMS as the content is inherently source controlled and distributed automatically.

Example

A QMS Demo environment.

See also

• Gitlab's documentation knowledge base

• Developing documentation remotely