Engineering docs

6 min

Use this page as a structured template for your team’s engineering knowledge. Capture system architecture, development workflows, operational practices, and anything engineers need to work effectively.

Update this page whenever architecture, tooling, or workflows change. Keeping engineering documentation accurate ensures alignment across the team.

Architecture overview

Start with a high‑level diagram that explains how your system works. Include major components, data flow, and boundaries.

flowchart LR
  Client --> API
  API --> ServiceA
  API --> ServiceB
  ServiceA --> Database
  ServiceB --> ExternalAPI

Add additional diagrams as needed—for example, service boundaries, event flows, or infrastructure layouts.

Development workflow

Document how engineers collaborate and ship code. Include:

Create a feature branch

Submit a pull request

Review with teammates

Merge after approvals

Deploy to the appropriate environment

You can supplement this with additional details:

Branching strategy (GitFlow, trunk‑based, etc.)

Code review expectations and standards

Definition of done

Testing requirements (unit, integration, E2E)

CI/CD pipeline steps

Deployment procedures

Share consistent, repeatable instructions for deploying your product.

# Example deployment script
npm install
npm run build
npm run deploy

Replace this with your real deployment steps or link to your deployment runbooks.

Operational notes

Help engineers understand how to support the system in production:

Runbooks for common operational tasks

Monitoring dashboards and alerting guidelines

Escalation paths during incidents

Logging and observability tools

Backup and recovery procedures

Best practices

Include any engineering standards your team follows:

Coding conventions

Security practices

API versioning strategy

Performance guidelines

Dependency management rules