diff --git a/HISTORY.rst b/HISTORY.rst
index e51eeefc..e40445a0 100644
--- a/HISTORY.rst
+++ b/HISTORY.rst
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ History
 
 X.Y.Z (YYYY-MM-DD)
 ------------------
+* Make poetry dev and docs groups optional (:pr:`316`)
 * Only test Github Action Push events on master (:pr:`313`)
 * Move consolidated metadata into partition subdirectories (:pr:`312`)
 * Set ``_ARRAY_DIMENSIONS`` attribute on Data Variables (:pr:`311`)
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index a49cca9f..c941629d 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -33,6 +33,9 @@ s3 = ["s3fs"]
 complete = ["s3fs", "pandas", "pyarrow", "xarray", "zarr"]
 testing = ["minio", "pytest"]
 
+[tool.poetry.group.dev]
+optional = true
+
 [tool.poetry.group.dev.dependencies]
 tbump = "^6.9.0"
 pre-commit = "^2.20.0"
@@ -41,6 +44,9 @@ ipython = "^8.16.1"
 ipdb = "^0.13.13"
 ruff = "^0.1.3"
 
+[tool.poetry.group.docs]
+optional = true
+
 [tool.poetry.group.docs.dependencies]
 furo = "^2022.9.15"
 Sphinx = "^5.1.1"