How to Build a Culture of Documentation

Hello! I hope you are well. For this post we’ll be diving into some process management/leadership principles and discussing how to build a culture of documentation within an organization. Embracing, prioritizing and maintaining a culture of documentation is one key factor that separates the best companies and teams from the rest. In this article we’ll answer the question “What is Documentation?” and share why having documentation is important. We’ll go over some types of documentation, then wrap up with some suggestions on how to build a culture of documentation. If you are more of a visual learner you can skip to the bottom and watch the video on the HD YouTube channel that covers this topic. Let’s get to it.

What is Documentation?

We use documentation every single day. At its core “documentation” is a document or set of documents. These documents fall into one of four categories:

Figure 1. What is Documentation?

Why is Documentation important?

• It promotes efficiency (standardizes business processes and promotes big picture thinking)
• It reduces risk (reduces dependencies, e.g. if key talent leaves).
• It reduces training time and costs (onboarding new employees).
• It bridges gaps between experiences (i.e. people use different tools at different companies that do the same thing, documentation helps translate the languages between experiences).
• It facilitates process improvement (ongoing assessment/auditing, focus on the root problem of process issues)
• It supports business verticals (GAP analysis, new business pitches)
• It develops authority (empowers analysts as “owners” of process)
• It promotes transparency and collaboration (breaks down silos)
• It standardizes systems (promotes consistency with naming conventions and methodologies)

All the above items lead to increased efficiency and translate to profitability and quality outputs in the long run.

Some Reasons Why Companies/Teams Fail to Build Cultures of Documentation

It takes discipline and strong leadership to make documentation a priority within a team and organization. Some common reasons why this does not happen include:

Figure 2. Reasons why Documentation is not a priority in some orgs

What are the Traits of Good Documentation?

• Well crafted documentation informs users, and enables users to successfully accomplish a task
• Well crafted documentation addresses the right audience
• Is easy to understand
• Gets to the point (no vague language)
• Provides context (if necessary)
• Has good visuals
• Is well vetted
• Has the authors name (in the event questions arise), is dated (so its clear when it needs to be refreshed), and indicates the tools/skills required for the task

What are the Different Types of Documentation?

Documentation generally falls into four categories:

Figure 2. Different types of documentation

Process Documentation

Process documentation provides a clear, easy to follow, step by step action plan (process) for accomplishing something. That “something” could be a business task (e.g. building a report), a recreational activity, even setting up a new purchase (e.g. new TV or phone)! As Hickam’s Dictum is a business intelligence/tech blog we will focus on business and digital use cases. Check out the below examples of online process documentation from YouTube (creating a channel) and Google Analytics (setting up custom dimensions and custom metrics):

Figure 3. Google and YouTube process documentation examples

Historical Documentation

Historical documentation provides an easy to follow, detailed and accurate account of an event. News articles are great examples of documents we see everyday that give an account of “something” that happened. From a business context, meeting “minutes” (meeting summaries) and memos are good examples of historical documentation.

Overview Documentation

Overview (or Big Picture) documentation are strategic documents that give the lay of the land, and if necessary include a SWOT analysis of the subject in question, key success and failure metrics, benchmarks, key stakeholders and anything else that will empower end users with an understanding of a subject, and gives clear direction of what is needed (or sets the stage for that discussion to happen). Good examples of overview strategic documents would be military or police mission briefings. From a business perspective, campaign briefings (commonly found in the IT/marketing/public relations and advertising worlds) and account overview documents are good examples.

Architecture Documentation

Architectural Documentation (also called Solution Design documents in some circles) focus on infrastructure and connected systems and tend to be more technical. These documents detail how to execute/implement technical solutions, and includes information about all the elements involved (how they are connected, what each element contains, and detailed visuals (usually diagrams) that show the relationship between all parts of the system. An ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram), commonly used in database management to show the relationship between tables and databases is an example of an Architectural document.

Figure 4. ERD example.

Its important to note that these categories are not mutually exclusive. For example, in web design a User Experience Document (UX) will typically fall under the Architecture bucket (with detailed wireframes, customer journey flows, etc), but may also have elements explaining the background of the project, which fall under the Overview category.

When it comes to software development, the type of documentation used also depends on the approach taken for development, the two most common being agile and waterfall approaches. We will get into those methods in another post.

How to Establish a Culture of Documentation in Your Team and/or Organization

We’ve gone over what documentation is, some reasons why certain companies and teams struggle to build cultures of documentation, the traits of good documentation, and the different types of documentation. But how do we change attitudes and make documentation a priority? Below are some suggested tactics that have worked for me that I want to share based on my experience directing onshore and offshore teams:

Set Expectations and Provide Guidance.

I have joined organizations throughout my career where documentation was not a focal point, and I had to take a very proactive step in setting expectations and providing guidance for the analysts and managers under my charge. Setting expectations involves speaking in an “active” voice (e.g. “we will start documenting” vs “we should start documenting”), providing a documentation framework for the analysts and managers to operate (e.g. “we will start our documentation efforts with xyz reports”) and providing guidance (e.g. “attached to this email kindly find documentation templates to use” or lead by example: “I took the lead and documented xyz report in the attached template, please start documenting our other reports in this format”). This initiation steps requires strong, firm and proactive leadership.

Follow up and Communicate Importance.

If documentation has not been a focal point of business operations, it is very likely that your requests for documentation may not be immediately heeded (because it has not been a culture). It is essential to followup and communicate the importance (the “why”) behind your requests for documentation. So for example, a follow up email or conversation with your team will include statements like “it is important we document all our reports as this is a critical step in standardizing and creating competency within our workflows”).

Collaborate and Review.

It’s not enough to simply give directions to your team and leave it at that. It is critical to review all documents your team creates to make sure they are up to standard. I recommend you use the Traits of Good Documentation I outlined above as a checklist as you review the documents your team creates. Are they easy to understand? Do they provide context on the project? Do they address the right audience? Do they include the skills required? These are the sort of requirements to check off as you review the documentation sent your way for review. Provide feedback, and don’t be satisfied till the documents meet the required standard.

Promote Accountability

One practice I have with the teams I run are ongoing reviews of what processes and reports we have documented to date. The below image is an example of a standard documentation review checklist I share with my teams periodically for review (I’ve removed/altered the names and descriptions for this blog).

Figure 5. Documentation status checker

Create a Repository

It is hyper critical that your documents have a centralized home that all key stakeholders can access. Saving them on your local drive defeats the purpose of creating them in the first place. If your company has a server, consider setting up documentation folders by teams and/or projects. Collaborative platforms like Box, Sharepoint, Basecamp, Monday.com and Dropbox are all great resources to manage documentation in real time.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that documentation is an ongoing process that involves identifying processes and projects to be documented, documenting, storing created documents in an accessible and dynamic repository, reviewing stored documents periodically (a big reason why its important to date documents) and repeating the process all over again at a steady cadence.

Having a culture of documentation is a sign of strong leadership and operational efficiency, and can reap immense benefits for your organization in the form of reduced risk, increased collaboration, increased efficiency and a positive impact on the bottom line.

Check out the video below from the Hickam’s Dictum YouTube channel on this topic. Enjoy and please subscribe to the channel!

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