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Teams with bad documentation and which rely on tacit understanding are hugely vulnerable to people leaving the company and that knowledge walking out of the doo
by physicsguy 5y ago
Teams with bad documentation and which rely on tacit understanding are hugely vulnerable to people leaving the company and that knowledge walking out of the door, or people dying.
I’ve seen it myself multiple times - I’ve been hired to work on software with no or little documentation, where someone has retired or left, and there’s pretty much no choice but to start reimplementing parts of it because nobody understands any of it. It might be salvageable in some areas but when it’s my area (scientific/engineering code), lack of documentation kills projects, because nobody can work backwards easily and find out the assumptions which were made.
- MrGilbert 5y ago> [...] or people dying. Which, unfortunately, is ignored quite often from people who haven't experienced "death" yet. If someone walks out the door, there is most likely a chance you can get in contact with them if you need a crucial information afterwards (depends, sure, but you get the gist) - with dead people, the only thing you can rely on is a spiritual medium.
- physicsguy 5y agoI usually introduce it to management as "the bus factor" - how many people in this team would it take to be hit by a bus for the team to be completely fucked. I'm currently working (and soon leaving) a job like this - there's someone that keeps so many things to themselves that if they were hit by a bus, nobody would be able to deploy anything, etc. which is just unacceptable IMO.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xtiansimon 5y agoShouldn’t this legitimately be in the domain of management? Documenting, building a framework for understanding how work is accomplished, interfaces with other departments, etc.? In which case each manager is documenting their own process and knowledge. When this person leaves they take their notes with them?
- physicsguy 5y agoI don't know what teams you work on, but in the teams I've been based in, management have had a shaky grasp on technical aspects and wouldn't understand the documentation (if any) if it was put in front of them.