Technical Writer RFI

Problem Statement

OpenAMP is a relatively small open-source project in a complex problem space. The software that uses OpenAMP runs on multiple different CPU architectures within a single System-on-a-Chip (SoC) and provides processor life-cycle management and inter-processor communications.

The project is to improve the organization of OpenAMP's online documentation. There is also not a clear delineation of the different types of documentation, meaning that things like tutorials, API documentation, and user guides are sometimes intermixed. This is further complicated because there is information that is relevant to the project as a whole, and then there is information that is specific to the SoC or operating system vendors.

Project Scope

The project will consist of developing and implementing a new organization for the OpenAMP documentation, as well as developing any guides or processes necessary to ensure the documentation stays organized in the future. This could include recommending a new documentations system.

The first stage of the project will be to do an audit of the existing OpenAMP documentation, so we can have a better idea of what is there. This will include looking for documentation that is in the "wrong place", such as documentation that is currently in API documentation that may not belong there. It should also include taking stock of documentation that is not yet written but may be written in the future, so that the organization plan can include those when they are written.

The next stage will be to develop a plan for how the documentation will be organized. This will include developing some method(s) on getting user feedback, so that we can be sure that the organization plan is able to help users best find what they are looking for. The documentation organization plan should also include a style guide with a section about the organization, so that contributors of new documentation can properly maintain the organization.

The final stage will be to adopt the new organization and make the OpenAMP documentation follow the new organization. TDepending on how different the new organization plan is from the existing documentation, this may need to be implemented in several stages, to minimize the disruption to the rest of the OpenAMP development.

Work that is out-of-scope for this project:

It will be out of scope for this project to write new documentation that is found to be missing. New documentation requires technical knowledge of the underlying hardware and operating systems and generally must be done by an existing OpenAMP developer with the proper domain knowledge. Instead, the technical writer should make note of any gaps in documentation, which the team can then use when writing documentation in the future.