Doug Manis Portfolio

API reference for the Flexigift service

This is an API reference for the Flexigift gift card management service, a fictional product that allows users to spend their third-party gift cards directly at their Amazon.com shopping carts.

• Read the latest version.
• Review the document source code in GitHub.
• Watch a video overview where I step through the documents and discuss some of my editorial decisions.
• Learn more about the service and the docs.

Tools used

• Visual Studio Code to write the documents in Markdown.
• GitHub, Git command line, and GitHub Desktop for code reviews and managing versions.
• GitHub Pages with Jekyll templates to publish the documents.

About my process

I wrote this documentation as part of a class where we set up a product team including a product owner who defined the features and designed the database, a technical writer (me) who wrote the API docs, a technical editor who verified that the docs were accurate and met minimum style standards, and a usability tester who verified that the documents accurately described some common use cases.

Our publishing process looked like this:

1. Gather the documentation requirements in the product backlog. Design the document set.
2. Groom the work items for the sprint backlog.
3. Write, edit, review, commit to source control, deploy to production.
4. Repeat with each product increment until the full documentation set is delivered.
5. Define maintenance tasks to be considered for future increments.