TechDocs: Unlocking the Potential of Engineers' Collective Knowledge

Backstage is an internal developer portal that simplifies software development by centralizing and abstracting end-to-end software development. It comes with three core features, including the scaffolder, tech docs, and search plugin, which enable engineers to create, manage, and explore software components while contributing to collective knowledge.

• Backstage is an internal developer portal that simplifies software development by centralizing and abstracting end-to-end software development
• The scaffolder lets engineers create new software components based on standard templates, which can be configurable with tech docs
• Tech docs enable engineers to contribute to collective knowledge by providing a centralized place for internal technical documentation
• The search plugin makes all documentation discoverable through Backstage search, unlocking the potential of engineers' collective knowledge
• Collective knowledge only happens when more than one person contributes, and Backstage aims to remove the friction of contributing to collective knowledge
• Backstage is open source and can be customized to fit an organization's needs

The speaker shared a story about Emma, who wrote documentation that no one could find because it was not centralized. Backstage solves this problem by providing a centralized place for internal technical documentation, making it easy to find and contribute to collective knowledge.

Emma is an engineer with a big goal: her new service should provide the best developer experience, including well-maintained, discoverable and usable documentation. So she thinks, “Which tool should I use to write my docs?” followed by “How will other engineers find it?” What if she could instead, in one click, get docs generated together with her service when it's created? Documentation that lives in her repository, together with her code. Documentation that becomes discoverable automatically, to all engineers within the organization. Documentation in one single place: Backstage. This talk will guide you through how we fulfilled Emma’s big goal by adopting the “docs like code” approach and developing TechDocs, one of the core features of Backstage. It will also walk you through why we decided to open source this successful internal product to remove the friction of writing and discovering technical documentation for all engineers.