Docs sample: Dev onboarding doc for Amazon Music

Developer experience team onboarding doc update

Completed a rewrite of an important documentation page for Amazon Music.

Project context: As a technical writer on Amazon’s Developer Experience team on a 3-month contract, I was tasked with rewriting multiple onboarding docs, GraphQL getting started docs, and GraphQL reference.

Problems to solve: Onboarding for internal devs often took 2 or 3 entire days. Most GraphQL fields had no descriptions at all. The team never had a technical writer, and existing docs were written by multiple engineers, utilized inconsistent style, and were frequently out-of-date, missing product changes and deprecations.

Process for this document: I onboarded myself, logged all friction, and collaborated closely with an engineer and other team members to create a new sequence of installation and authentication steps. The rewritten doc resulted in an immediate reduction in blockers and support tickets.

Issues addressed:

  • Removed outdated/incorrect content
  • Rewrote headings considering inclusion in right-nav
  • Broke up overlong paragraphs, added numbered or bulleted steps when appropriate
  • Added or modified code samples and processes as needed, such as adding scripts, collaborating with engineer
  • Copyedits to remaining content

Audience and problems to solve: The audiences for the onboarding docs are internal Amazon engineers and third party developers.