I’m running some ambitious personal projects for my portfolio, and I’d really like to level up my documentation game, both for my own sanity, and so I can work better with vendors and collaborators.
I work mostly in consumer electronics, and my personal projects usually start in the design phase and I take them all the way into a functional product with a pcb, firmware, and housing. Are there standard document templates for communicating design intent, system architecture, CMF spec, or any other aspect that I may need to keep track of over a product lifecycle? When creating a BOM, are the input fields up to me, or is there certain information (outside the obvious part number and part count) that should always be in a professional BOM?
I’d really like to open-source some of my projects for the general public to reproduce, and for future employers to see examples of my workflow. I want to get in the habit of keeping legible, traceable documentation. But I often get overwhelmed and disorganized when running large projects with multiple subsystems.
Can anyone in the sub lend some perspective, or point me to resources that coach me on how to clearly communicate my projects to other engineers and vendors?