Product Documentation Best Practices: With Developer-Focused Real World Examples

TL;DR

• Product documentation is now a core part of the product itself, and not a support add-on. For developer-centric B2B SaaS teams, strong product docs accelerate onboarding, increase activation, and reduce support tickets.
• Many early-stage startups fail due to missing fundamentals: no quick-start path, no how-to guides, no starter templates, and core docs with outdated commands.
• Developer-focused documentation best practices are quick-start templates, structured core docs, and video walkthroughs. These drive measurable outcomes faster and offer higher product adoption.
• Real-world examples from B2B SaaS startups such as Vercel, Supabase, Stripe, GitHub, and HashiCorp show that documentation maturity directly influences growth and retention.

Imagine you’ve just adopted a new product into your workflow, anything, a software, hardware, or something in between.

It promises efficiency, clarity, and convenience. But the moment you sit down to start using it, you’re met with an interface or feature that isn’t as intuitive as you'd hoped. You pause, look around for guidance, and suddenly realize how critical clear, reliable product documentation truly is.

Most of us don’t actively seek out manuals, onboarding guides, or help articles until the moment we’re stuck. This is why product documentation isn’t an option anymore. It has become an important strategic necessity.

Project objectives in project management are clear, measurable, and time-bound targets that define the intended outcomes of a project. They establish a shared understanding of what success looks like and help align both the project team and key stakeholders around a common purpose.

Strong project objectives also set the foundation for effective planning and execution. They help manage expectations, support informed decision-making, and act as benchmarks for tracking progress and controlling the project throughout its life cycle. In essence, they function as a roadmap, guiding the team toward specific, with well-defined results.

In this blog, we’ll understand the different types of product documentation best practices to create objectives with real-world examples for your own projects.

What is Product Documentation?

Product Documentation is a collection of information created to explain, support and guide the use, development and maintenance of the product. It includes everything from high-level overviews to detailed technical specifications.

Product documentation describes what a product is, how it works, and how it should be used. This typically includes user manuals, feature guides, setup instructions, troubleshooting resources, disclaimers, and best-practice recommendations.

Product documentation is important to shorten the distance between the product and the support system when a user faces an issue with the product. There are different types of product documentation, so let’s learn about the types of product docs.

Types of Product Documentation

Product docs can be categorized into two major types. Both play different roles and serve different audiences.

1. System documentation
2. User documentation

Both shape how effectively a product can be built, maintained and adopted. For developer-centric products and especially in the B2B SaaS industry, understanding the distinction between these documentation types is essential. Why? Read along to learn more about. Let’s understand what exactly these types of documentation are.

System Documentation

System documentation includes everything that is related to “how the product works under the hood”.

This is built for internal stakeholders, engineers, architects, product managers, and sometimes technical partners. This documentation guides development, ensures continuity, and preserves institutional knowledge as teams evolve. This type of documentation is typically not shared with the public and it shares information like source code, architecture and design.

• The technical sections cater to a highly technical audience, such as engineers or researchers.
• The business-related sections cater to audiences like business developers and marketers.

Some examples of system documentation can be:

• Product requirements
• UX designs
• API documentation
• External knowledgebase
• Test plans
• Product roadmaps
• Technical design/ architecture

User Documentation

Moving on to the next major category, the user documentation, it focuses on helping the end users. The end users can be developers, product teams or your business customers. While system docs support internal understanding, user documentation supports customer success. Some examples of user documentation can be as follows:

• User manuals
• Quick-start guide
• Troubleshooting guide
• Internal knowledge base
• Installation manual
• Training manual
• FAQs
• SOP manual

User documentation can be a part of the product experience. It’s clear, action-oriented documentation often determines how quickly a user can integrate, evaluate, or scale your solution.

Why Developer-Focused Documentation Needs a Different Approach

Simply revamping the documentation will not shift how documentation contributes to business growth. Infrasity partnered with a cost optimization platform, DevZero and the transformation of its documentation through the collaboration with Infrasity didn’t just clean up how things are written but fundamentally shifted how documentation contributes to business growth. By turning documentation into an active, self-serve learning and onboarding engine, DevZero realized several quantifiable benefits.

Product docs are a versatile asset and this is why developer-focused documentation needs a different approach because it:

• Accelerates the onboarding process and is time-efficient: Friction during onboarding kills activation, which is why if developers can’t get a working environment or example running quickly, they churn before they ever understand the product’s value.
  One of the most direct impacts was faster developer onboarding. Before Infrasity’s intervention, developers struggled to set up and experiment with DevZero because they had to build everything from scratch. After the rollout of quick-start templates, structured how-to guides, and video walkthroughs, developers could go from zero to “running a working app” in minutes. This dramatically reduces the time to first usage.
• Increase in Developer engagement: Documentation is an ongoing engagement channel. More returning users are more teams adopting workflows, more internal champions, and more opportunities for expansion.
  Developer products like Stripe and Supabase famously attribute consistent engagement spikes to well-organized docs that encourage deeper feature exploration.
• Lower Support Load & Higher Self-Service Success: Support is one of the highest-cost functions in developer-focused startups like Linear and Rippling have publicly reported that better self-serve help resources reduce repeated tickets, allowing support teams to focus on real edge cases rather than onboarding basics.
  Zendesk’s SaaS benchmark reports that robust self-service documentation can decrease ticket volume by a considerable percentage.

Common Pain Points Many B2B SaaS Startups Miss

Across the B2B SaaS industry, most early-stage teams underestimate how much Product Documentation impacts onboarding, trial conversion, and long-term adoption. Despite having strong engineering and innovative features, the developer journey often breaks before a user ever reaches the “aha” moment.

Let’s take a quick look at the most common pain point that several startups face in the industry of B2B SaaS:

• No Quick-Start Path
• No Starter Templates
• No “How-To” Guides
• Engineer-Written Docs Without Structure
• No Video Walkthroughs

5 Product Documentation Best Practices

Product docs are no longer just reference material; they’re now an onboarding engine, a product education ecosystem, and a self-serve support layer. The following documentation best practices are:

1. Provide Quick-Start Templates to Accelerate First Success

Quick-start templates are one of the highest-impact investments developer-focused B2B SaaS startups can make. They give users something to run immediately, not after configuration, not after reading 8 pages of docs, and not after guessing the right commands.

Example: Vercel’s Next.js starter kits drastically reduce setup friction and are credited for accelerating Next.js adoption globally. Another instance is Supabase’s quick-start templates that allow developers to deploy a working app with authentication and a database in minutes, shortening time-to-value

2. Develop How-To Guides

How-to guides bridge the gap between “I understand the concept” and “I can actually implement this in my stack.” They remove guesswork, provide structure, and serve as a step-by-step map for real engineering use cases.

Having powerful features but not having clear, actionable, end-to-end how to guides that show users how to apply those features in real-world workflows will not serve the purpose of developing great features.

This is because developers will not have any guidance for tasks. For example, integrating DevZero with AWS, GCP, or GitHub. Without any structured how-to guides, users were left to interpret high-level concepts with no practical next steps.

Example: HashiCorp introduced Terraform guides that included end-to-end cloud provisioning demos, which turned out to be essential for adoption at scale.

Another example is how Infrasity authored complete, engineer-ready how-to guides, covering the most commonly needed cloud and infrastructure patterns for one of its cost optimization platforms, DevZero.

The image below is an example of the how to guides, created for:

• Cloud services such as AWS, Azure and GCP
• Databases such as Supabase, Neon, MongoDB, etc
• CI such as GitHub Actions (Kubernetes) and (Workspace)
• Remote Desktop
• Build Cache + Remote Execution, such as Bazel and Docker

This provided developers with a mental model of how the networking works before they execute any commands.

3. Offer Production-Ready Starter Templates for Teams

If you have been around in the B2B SaaS industry, you will know that the Starter Templates differ from quick-starts because they aren’t just demos. They are reusable, production-aligned blueprints that teams clone, customize, and standardize across engineering organizations.

You need starter templates for your product as they provide standardization, which drives retention, especially in dev-focused platforms. They reduce onboarding for new hires, ensure architectural consistency, and increase long-term reliance on the platform. Several B2B SaaS startups like Vercel, GitHub, etc have:

• GitHub Actions Starter Workflows: Which is now widely adopted as internal team baselines.
• Helm Charts for Kubernetes apps: Used by thousands of teams as their deployment foundation.
• Vercel’s starter packs for enterprise teams: This allowed a consistent app structure across all developers.

The image below shows how Infrasity created a complete library of production-aligned starter templates across every major engineering category. These templates covered:

• Language Templates: Rust, CS, C, Cpp, Dart, Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, etc
• Build Tool Templates: Bazel, Docker, and Nix
• Database Tool Templates: Supabase Baserow, MongoDB, NocoDB, and Postgres
• CI/CD Templates: GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Automatisch, Bazel Buildfarm, and Gitea
• Infrastructure Tool Templates: Dokku, Helm, Fonoster, Kubectx + Kubens, K9S, Langfuse, Terraform CLI, etc.

4. Build Structured Core Documentation

Core documentation is the backbone of a product’s developer experience. It needs to be structured, navigable, and built like a learning path. Good structure reduces cognitive overload and accelerates comprehension. Poor structure increases churn, confusion, and support ticket volume.

Startups like Notion, Twilio, or Stripe all saw results because their documentation was:

• Logically structured
• Clear about commands, environment assumptions, and outcomes
• Designed with developer workflows in mind

Example: Infrasity rebuilt one of its customers’ core documentation structures to a clearer developer journey. Prior to partnering with Infraisty, they had yet to have any structured documentation for new users.

We also updated the outdated commands and improved the overall structure and content flow of the core documentations, as those were written by engineers, which made the content extremely dense.

This turned our customer’s core documentation from informative but dense, engineer-written notes into a polished, developer-first knowledge system that supported fast onboarding, reduced friction, and encouraged deeper exploration of the platform.

5. Pair Product Docs with Engineering-First Video Walkthroughs

Videos are no longer optional in developer onboarding; they’re now expected to be available for users. Developers want to see commands executed, workflows validated, and configurations demonstrated in real time.

Why are video walkthroughs given so much importance? It is because visual learners, especially beginners, progress much faster with a live demonstration and videos enhance text-based documentation by making it multimodal.

Example: Infrasity collaborated with an AI agent platform for managing developers, Kubiya.ai, produced and delivered a video walkthrough. The video walkthrough explained their product step-by-step so that users don’t have to start from scratch.

Another example is how we created around 20 video walkthroughs for DevZero and paired them with the how to guides, such as RDS (Relational Database Service), ElastiCashe, etc. This step was taken so that every major how-to guide was paired with short, engineering-first video walkthroughs. We approached the videos by:

• First recording, showing every command run in real time
• Step-by-step execution of the same instructions developers see in the docs
• Full-length walkthroughs for deeper workflows

The image below shows how the videos are linked to each how to guide so it’s easier for developers to understand and implement.

This also decreased repeated support tickets, because developers could troubleshoot by rewatching specific steps. With these walkthrough videos, DevZero had a multi-format learning experience: text + diagrams + code + real execution.

Conclusion

Developer-focused B2B SaaS products don’t compete on features alone; they compete on how quickly a developer can understand, integrate, and trust the product. That’s why documentation is no longer a “nice-to-have” asset sitting in a sidebar, it’s a core growth engine that directly influences onboarding, adoption, retention, support costs, and expansion revenue.

Infrasity’s collaborations are an example of how documentation maturity can reshape a product's trajectory. With structured learning paths, ready-to-run templates, real-world how-to guides, and engineering-grade video walkthroughs, startups like Kubiya and DevZero transformed their onboarding journey from “figure it out yourself” into a repeatable, scalable, developer-first experience.

This is the new competitive advantage for modern B2B SaaS and DevTools products. If you want your product documentation to become a growth lever rather than a maintenance burden, this is the moment to invest in it.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the purpose of product documentation for B2B SaaS companies?

Product documentation helps customers understand, adopt, and successfully integrate your product. For emerging B2B SaaS startups, it reduces support load, accelerates onboarding, and empowers technical teams, especially developers, to build or automate faster using your platform.

2. How do quick-start templates affect developer adoption?

Quick-starts give developers an immediate win. In most B2B SaaS startups, the first 10-15 minutes determine whether a user continues or churns. Templates drastically shorten setup time and showcase the product’s value instantly.

3. What’s the difference between quick-start templates and starter templates?

Quick-starts are simple working examples for first success. While Starter templates are production-ready baselines, teams can standardize across projects. Both serve different stages of the developer journey, and both are essential for adoption

4. How can a B2B SaaS startup know if its documentation is hurting adoption?

You can look for signs like:

• High support ticket volume for basic onboarding
• Developers asking for clarification repeatedly
• Low activation rates in free trials
• Low engagement with docs, templates, or APIs

If onboarding questions repeat, your documentation is failing and needs immediate attention.

5. Why are video walkthroughs necessary if written docs already exist?

Video walkthroughs are important because developers learn differently. Video walkthroughs reduce confusion for complex workflows, show live command execution, and drastically lower support load. They complement text-based docs, not replace them.