From "Documentation Person" To Documentation Champion

We hear this one a lot. A partner is IT Glue, and even though they’re loving what it does for them, there’s still a bit of a gap when it comes to team adoption. Usually, we’re hearing this from an exasperated tech who’s been assigned the role of “person in charge of documentation”, which is often a thankless task with little help from teammates.

But wait – isn’t it better to have one person in charge? So that person can ensure that documentation adheres to a consistent naming convention and is filed correctly? Yes, that is true, but this doesn’t mean the one “documentation person” has to create all the documentation as well. When the librarian is also the author of all the books in the library, that’s going to be a pretty lousy library.

Documentation culture is awesome and allows you to get full value from your documentation system. But culture is something shared by a group of people; if it’s just one person, it’s not a culture. So let’s say you are the proverbial documentarian in your company. How do you spread the love of documentation across the entire organization?

It’s Not How Much Documentation You Have…

How you use your documentation matters. You can document the entire planet, but unless you’re using that information, it’s really just random data stored in a virtual box. There’s only so much value in that. So the first step in building a great documentation culture is to champion the use of the documentation you’ve so carefully curated.