In every organization I’ve worked for or with, there’s been a recurring issue: accessible documentation. We are even guilty of it at Pedal Lucid. I’m not here to tell you to write documentation—you’ve heard that before. I’m here to tell you to put it in a place where your users know where to find it and actually use it.
As technologists, we can boil our work down to: scope > build > deliver. When we deliver, there’s often shared resources that were formerly working documents and now contain valuable information about how the new product/process/tool works.
It is imperative that:
- Those working artifacts are consolidated in a central location for future reference
- They are translated into appropriate documentation, ideally during a signoff or acceptance process
- The documentation lives in an accessible location that users are properly trained to use
We’re all for human interaction, but you want your staff looking for policies and how-tos rather than asking each other how to do everything. Having a central place for documentation that employees know how to access ensures standard operating procedure and builds self reliance.
Training is another blog post in itself, but don’t expect staff to retain all the new things about a piece of technology they learned in a single session—focus on high level concepts and make sure they know where to access the documentation later for the details. And reinforce this!
There are tons of tools out there to build an easily searchable knowledge database but they’ll never be successful without adding the documentation, keeping it updated (building trust) and training your users.
So don’t just write the documentation, make sure it’s easily accessible for those who need it and reinforce using it. You’ll know you’re successful when questions start with “I checked our documentation and…”
