Documenting Through a Product Pivot
Calimero was a Web3 company in the NEAR ecosystem that went through a major product direction change during my tenure. The original product focused on one set of capabilities, but the company pivoted to focus on private network protocols and different blockchain infrastructure.
Documenting through a pivot is one of the harder challenges in technical writing. The target keeps moving, and you have to keep everything coherent for users who may not even know the product has changed direction.
Keeping Docs Accurate Through the Transition
This meant more than updating a few pages. I maintained and updated product documentation through the pivot, filling content gaps as new features shipped and deprecating content for features being sunsetted. New capabilities across blockchain infrastructure and private network protocols needed documentation while old capabilities needed graceful retirement.
SDK Documentation
I wrote SDK documentation for both the JavaScript and Rust client libraries as they evolved alongside the product. SDK docs during a pivot are particularly tricky because the APIs are changing rapidly, and developers who integrated before the pivot need to understand what’s different without re-reading everything.
Reducing Support Load
During the transition, users were especially confused about what had changed. I created Zendesk support articles targeting the most common questions and issues. The goal was to reduce the repetitive support tickets so the support team could focus on the genuinely complex problems.
Internal Documentation
I managed internal Confluence documentation to simplify team onboarding. The pivot meant even internal teams needed updated context on what the product now did and how it worked. New engineers joining mid-pivot needed a clear picture of the current state, not the historical state.
Technical Content and Visual Assets
Throughout this period, I authored technical blogs and ecosystem guides for the NEAR developer community, created flowcharts and architecture diagrams using Draw.io, and collaborated with product and engineering within an Agile workflow to ship documentation alongside releases.
The Lesson
What got me through it was having systems in place. The docs-as-code pipeline, the Agile workflow integration, the clear information architecture. When the product changed, I could update the system instead of starting over.