Kelsey Lambert profile image

Kelsey Lambert

Salesforce

An Inside Look at a Large-scale Writer-driven REST API Doc Solution

Biography

Kelsey has worked in software development as a technical writer since 2006. She's been at Salesforce for 4 years and she's a lead technical writer for the Platform Content Experience team. Kelsey writes developer docs and leads a strategic group of writers focused on implementing code-to-doc OpenAPI projects across all clouds at Salesforce. Outside of work she loves to exercise, cook, read, play the piano, and travel to new places with her family.

Talk description

23 different REST APIs, 26+ teams, 150+ writers — how we built a unified solution. In this session, hear the inside story of how a handful of writers developed a REST API doc solution and earned the trust of executives and engineering teams across Salesforce along the way.

How can writers drive developer documentation initiatives at a large company? At Salesforce, we have 23 REST APIs that span 26+ teams and 150+ writers. API doc is published in 10 different dev doc environments. Our customers, developers, and writers are demanding a modern and unified solution for our REST API docs. At a company as large as Salesforce, it’s challenging to align on a strategy and make traction at scale. In June 2018, a group of developer-focused writers teamed up to tackle this problem using the OpenAPI standard. With no official funding or allocation for this project, but with the generous support of our managers, we’ve developed a REST API doc solution across multiple teams. We have earned the trust of executives and engineering teams across Salesforce along the way. In this session, we share our story of how we got there, with the hope of empowering other writers to tackle projects that feel impossible right now.