The ScaleMath Documentation Method gives us a consistent way to plan, write, review, restructure and maintain product documentation.
Its purpose is not to impose one fixed structure on every documentation library. It is to give writers and editors a shared way to make decisions: whether new documentation is needed at all, how content should be structured, when overlapping pages should be merged or separated, what knowledge can reasonably be assumed, and whether a page is ready to publish.
Without an agreed method, documentation grows around individual requests, product releases, support tickets and historical publishing decisions rather than user needs. That produces overlapping pages, unclear scope, and documentation that is technically accurate but difficult to use. Every library we inherit has the same fingerprints on it.
So the method starts with one question: what does the user need from this documentation?
Everything after this section is an answer to that question, or a way of holding ourselves to it.
How to read this
The method is written to be worked through in order the first time and used as a reference afterwards. Chapter two sets the foundation and is worth reading before the rest. Chapter three is the ten principles the whole method rests on. Chapters four through six are the working sections: how to classify a page, how to operate on a library that already exists, and how to write and publish to a standard.
If you are picking up an existing documentation set for the first time, start with working on a library that already exists.
