I had a great question this week about how to avoid team and organisation documentation being outdated and useless. When I hear this, I often respond with, “What mechanisms do they have in place to keep documentation valuable?”

Documentation is a classic tragedy of the commons problem. Most organisations hope individuals will keep documentation up to date and relevant but when leaders incentivise and reward individual work (i.e. finishing stories, code, etc) over long-term or team-beneficial work they don’t realise they are setting up a system for failure. Most teams need a counterbalancing force to encourage documenting important information and keeping existing documentation up to date. It’s the leader’s responsibility to ensure there is enough counterbalancing force.

Most people don’t realise that documentation is a people problem. People problems don’t get solved with tools despite many leaders in tech asking, “What tool does your organisation use for good documentation?” Here are some ideas that work for organisations that maintain great documentation:

Although no documentation is ever perfect (like software, it should keep evolving), it doesn’t take too much effort to transform zero/poor documentation into useful documentation. The state of documentation reflects the culture and expectations you set as leaders. Remember that culture is not just the behaviour you allow, but also that which you tolerate.

Your challenge this week is to look at what you do encourage and improve documentation? What counterbalancing processes do you have against the constant and endless flow of individual work?

Enjoy this week’s newsletter, please pass it on to a friend or colleague who might benefit.

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