Celebrating One Year at Ionic

“Lisa, I… think I just found my dream job.”

The Best-laid Plans…

Late one April night, my wife and I were in the midst of packing up our Seattle apartment. It had been a fun three years, but it was time to move back to the Midwest. Specifically, our sights were set on Madison, Wisconsin.

Our plan was to sell (almost) everything we owned, drive across the country from Seattle to Madison, drop off our remaining stuff at my in-law’s place, then backpack around Europe for a few weeks. After Europe, we’d begin looking for new jobs. We’d been saving and meticulously planning for years to pull it off.

The Easiest Way to Keep Product Documentation Up to Date

Documentation.

The backbone of successful and beloved products, but difficult to keep up to date given how quickly products evolve. Not to mention dreaded by software developers, who would instead write code.

Given these challenges, I’ve found that the easiest way to keep product documentation up to date is:

While working on a product, update its documentation simultaneously.

At face value, this appears simple enough, but often isn’t.

Why This Approach?

When building your product or creating a demo, chances are you’re focused on a specific area or “theme.” This includes installation/setup, hosting, interacting with the CLI, debugging, UI theming, backend API integration, etc. Updating documentation simultaneously is much faster when the related product concepts are fresh in your mind. This is often the reason why developers shy away from documentation updates - it’s left to the end of the current task or sprint, making it easy to fall to the wayside. Or worse: “when we get to it” which, spoiler alert, is often never.

From Bottom-Up to Top-Down Missionary

Author’s Note: Many people share their accomplishments publicly, only showcasing the successful end result. In reality, the road to personal growth is never as smooth as it appears. In my “Behind the Curtain” series, I shine a light on the reality of the hard work, successes, and failures encountered in my career.

Before joining the startup world last year, I spent most of my career in consulting, most recently at Slalom - a strategy and technology consulting firm headquartered in Seattle. As a “gun for hire”, so to speak, I was brought on to help our clients execute the software engineering aspects of strategic business initiatives, like helping Starbucks overhaul their loyalty rewards program.