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Documentation starts with you. When you experience the feeling "why wasn't this written down?", that is your signal to document it. Don't make it rigorous, rigo

Documentation starts with you. When you experience the feeling "why wasn't this written down?", that is your signal to document it. Don't make it rigorous, rigorous documentation is mostly waste. One of the more useful forms of documentation, especially for the cost, is notes coming out of a meeting. Keep a bulleted list of topics discussed in every meeting, when there are disagreements (eg in technical approaches) record who argued each position. It can help to have the notes visible during the meeting to get people to clarify their points. Record what everyone says they will do as an outcome to the meeting. Send the notes out afterwards. Edit to add: double check when you're writing down a commitment from someone. "Josh, I've got you down to defrag the hard drives in staging, is that right?"

HarryHirsch 4y ago
When you experience the feeling "why wasn't this written down?", that is your signal to document it. It would be the case, were there (even informal) processes for writing documentation. But since there is no documentation the process is that there isn't any experienced people have to humiliate themselves and ask the local gatekeeper about procedures that should have been written down a long time back. No documentation is the sign of a terminally messed up workplace. Run as fast as you can.
- kevinmchugh 4y ago
  You do not need a process to write documentation. You do not need permission. Start writing things down as informally as possible. A company wiki is good, or in word documents that you put in the shared drive. When someone complains that the documents are not standardized, you give them the work of standardizing. You can choose to not write down what the gatekeeper told you, but why would you choose that?
  - HarryHirsch 4y ago
    The question is: why didn't the previous person document stuff and hand it to the next person, after all you need proper documentation for institutional continuity? The answer is as always: a messed-up workplace, people wanting to make themselves indispensable or important, and as the new guy you are not going to change that. (Me? I've actually been looked at funny and then written up for asking the gatekeeper's bestie about processes!) Man, that place of employment was messed up.
justin_oaks 4y ago
I endorse this idea. You can lead by example and make things better for yourself and all those that work with you. The downside is that your boss may actively discourage you from documenting. You may get in trouble if you take any time documenting when you could be, say, coding. I find that this is only a problem when you make it explicit that you're doing one thing instead of the other. So don't say "I'll spend some time documenting this". The same thing goes for refactoring. Don't say "I'm going to spend some time refactoring". These items count as the nitty-gritty of software development. Your boss doesn't need to know the details. You just do it because it's the right way to do things. Same goes for unit testing, if it makes sense for your work.

HarryHirsch 4y ago

When you experience the feeling "why wasn't this written down?", that is your signal to document it. It would be the case, were there (even informal) processes for writing documentation. But since there is no documentation the process is that there isn't any experienced people have to humiliate themselves and ask the local gatekeeper about procedures that should have been written down a long time back. No documentation is the sign of a terminally messed up workplace. Run as fast as you can.

kevinmchugh 4y ago
You do not need a process to write documentation. You do not need permission. Start writing things down as informally as possible. A company wiki is good, or in word documents that you put in the shared drive. When someone complains that the documents are not standardized, you give them the work of standardizing. You can choose to not write down what the gatekeeper told you, but why would you choose that?
- HarryHirsch 4y ago
  The question is: why didn't the previous person document stuff and hand it to the next person, after all you need proper documentation for institutional continuity? The answer is as always: a messed-up workplace, people wanting to make themselves indispensable or important, and as the new guy you are not going to change that. (Me? I've actually been looked at funny and then written up for asking the gatekeeper's bestie about processes!) Man, that place of employment was messed up.

justin_oaks 4y ago

I endorse this idea. You can lead by example and make things better for yourself and all those that work with you. The downside is that your boss may actively discourage you from documenting. You may get in trouble if you take any time documenting when you could be, say, coding. I find that this is only a problem when you make it explicit that you're doing one thing instead of the other. So don't say "I'll spend some time documenting this". The same thing goes for refactoring. Don't say "I'm going to spend some time refactoring". These items count as the nitty-gritty of software development. Your boss doesn't need to know the details. You just do it because it's the right way to do things. Same goes for unit testing, if it makes sense for your work.