Automation of Non-code Documentation in a DevOps Environment

Abstract: In today's industry the DevOps work-style is adopted in more and more companies. Following the work-style often leads to companies being more efficient at delivering new feature and high quality software at higher speeds.However, one thing that the DevOps work-style fail to address is the process of writing good and reliable non-code documentation. The non-code documentation often becomes a bottleneck for the companies following the work-style and is in need of an updated process to make it more effective and sustainable over time. In this thesis, the problem is addressed by designing and building a prototype system capable of automating the process of creating non-code documentation. In order to create a system capable of automating the process and thus increasing the flow and efficiency of the DevOps work-style, the prototype system has been built by combining powerful pre-existing tools like Pandoc, LaTeX and Docker together. The resulting system is implemented in a platform like GitLab or Bitbucket and can be used to automatically generate documentation with new releases. The documents are written in plain-text markdown files, letting the user focus on the content rather than the aesthetics of the document. This resulted in an increase of creating non-code documents 33.8% faster than existing methods like using Microsoft Word. Finally, the prototype system also generates more aesthetically looking documentation.