Documentation Quadrants

Have you ever heard someone say: I can’t find anything in this documentation? Potential solution = Documentation Quadrants

At work, we recently had a Thoughtworks Tech Radar presentation that was pretty interesting. A colleague introduced us to a way of improving documentation.

This organises documentation into 4 universal categories, along 2 axes.

1. Y axes = nature of the information: is it practical or theoretical?
2. X axes = context of use: are you studying or working?

This is beneficial because:

1. It helps readers to easier find documentation and understand the broader context
2. It helps writers to think of the audience and purpose behind the documentation

Originally developed by Divio, Steve Dunn gives a good explanation of what the nuances mean and how he used it effectively.

Divio diagram

Beware the danger of collapse, where we’re mixing up all the quadrants (discussion, reference, how to, tutorials) into one.

Although this is linked to Software documentation. I think it can be used for any documentation, as it’s a good way of organising documents in an intuitive way. I’ve updated my Wiki to adopt this format. At work we’ll adopt this for our team page as well.