Writing docs

The value of a knowledge-centered business is more obvious during times of stress. You have already captured what is important for use at a later date. And if you haven’t been capturing knowledge already, it’s never too late to start.

Your team handbook is the manual that you present to all employees, and it contains the essentials of working for your company.

Jidoka means catching errors in the production system at the first chance you get, in order to stop them snowballing into larger problems and defects.

The documentation team at Splunk have written their own book called The Product is Docs. It covers the most important aspects of documentation for software development product teams.

Sometimes, poor documentation is a minor amusement. Other times, insufficient documentation can actually be dangerous. Mostly though, poor documentation is frustrating more than anything. 

While a lot of documentation can be corrective – that is, aimed at troubleshooting problems which have already occurred – there’s a powerful argument to be made that you should invest in preventative documentation.