What documents do you introduce in a project, from start to end, and in what order?

In a typical data engineering project, I follow a structured documentation lifecycle to ensure clarity, compliance, and maintainability. 1. Project Charter: outlines objectives, scope, stakeholders, and success criteria. 2. Requirements Specification: captures functional and non‑functional requirements, data sources, and quality rules. 3. Architecture Diagram: visualizes data flow, storage layers, and integration points. 4. Data Model & Schema Registry: defines entities, relationships, and versioned schemas. 5. Design Document: details ETL/ELT logic, transformations, and error handling. 6. Test Plan & Test Cases: specifies unit, integration, and performance tests. 7. Deployment Plan: includes CI/CD pipelines, environment configurations, and rollback procedures. 8. Operational Runbook: covers monitoring, alerting, and incident response. 9. User Guide & API Docs: provide end‑user instructions and technical API references. 10. Post‑Implementation Review: captures lessons learned and future enhancements. By documenting each phase in order, I ensure traceability, facilitate hand‑offs, and support auditability throughout the project lifecycle.