Manny Silva: Docs as Tests for Resilient Technical Documentation – Episode 213

Content Strategy Insights

Manny Silva Technical documentation of software products is critical work that needs to accurately inform end users, regardless of how quickly and substantially the software might be changing. Manny Silva has created the Docs as Tests, a system that integrates a set of well-developed practices and a collection of engineering tooling, to help technical communicators streamline and constantly improve their software documentation work. We talked about: his work at Skyflow and his new book "Docs as Tests" and a new version of his Doc Detective software the variety of "docs as" strategies that have emerged in technical documentation the intent of Docs as Tests to validate the accuracy of documentation the principles that underlie his approach to documentation the truism that in software "something always breaks" and the way Docs as Tests addresses this issue the tools available to test documentation the origins of his Doc Detective tool, which integrates developer tools in a tech-writer-friendly package how he extracts content and code from documentation to test it the differences between his old and new ways of validating the documentation he creates some examples of his Docs as Tests workflows, as well as other organizations doing similar kinds of of testing a key insight in the development of how to present Docs as Code to other tech writers the support and excitement he has seen in the tech docs community for his tools and others' Manny's bio Technical writer by day, engineer by night, and father everywhere in between, Manny wear many (figurative) hats. He's passionate about intuitive and scalable developer experiences, and he likes diving into the deep end as the 0th user. Here are a few things that keep him busy: Head of Docs at Skyflow, a data privacy vault company Author of Docs as Tests: A Strategy for Resilient Technical Documentation and the Docs as Tests blog Creator and maintainer of Doc Detective, an open-source doc testing framework AI development and experimentation He's always looking for collaborators on his projects, and he loves chatting with folks, so don't hesitate to reach out. Connect with Manny online LinkedIn Docs as Tests Doc Detective Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/zPkjrG1zgHg Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 213. As software has evolved from occasionally updated, shrink-wrapped artifacts to complex, continuously evolving online products, technical documentation practices have had to adapt. Manny Silva's contribution to this evolving technical landscape is the idea of Docs as Tests, a set of practices and a collection of engineering tooling that helps technical communicators streamline, automate, and otherwise improve their software documentation work. Interview transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 213 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I am really delighted today to welcome to the show Manny Silva. Manny is the author of the forthcoming book, Docs as Tests, and that's what we're going to talk about today. The subtitle of that book is A Strategy for Resilient Technical Documentation. Which he's got a fascinating approach and we'll talk in detail about that. He's currently the head of Docs at Skyflow and he's also the creator of a tool called Doc Detective that we'll talk more about. So welcome, Manny. Tell the folks a little bit more about what you're up to these days. Manny: Thank you for having me, Larry. Well, there's the book that you already mentioned that's going to be coming out shortly. I am working on a new version of the Doc Detective software to come out alongside the book. But otherwise I am handling things at Skyflow, new fun features coming out all the time. I own all of the documentation there, all of the error strings, really anything that's text that it doesn't come from...