IT Documentation Best Practices

By Ashley Ogilvie, IT Glue

How do you ensure your documentation is as valuable as it can be? Great question. We’ve told you the reasons why documentation is so important, and how to go about building your documentation, but as you continue your journey with documentation we wanted to bring you a list of the best practices to keep in mind. Following these tips will ensure you are always documenting in the most efficient way, saving you the most time and providing you the most value.

Automate

The easier and less time consuming you make your documentation, the more complete and accurate it is likely to be. So when you have the opportunity to automate your documentation, take advantage of it. When it comes down to entering several hundred passwords manually, or having them automatically synced through an integration, the answer is perfectly clear. Automation is going to save you time, and increase the accuracy of your data. What’s even better? IT Glue already has a host of native integrations, as well as a public API to help you build your own.

Create a Hierarchy

It’s not about how much you document, but whether the documentation you produce creates value for you, your staff and your clients. To do this, you’ll want to understand the MSP Information Hierarchy. After you’ve spent time focusing on what documentation you can automate, start with your most routine tasks. These are the most valuable tasks to start documenting, as they’re the tasks your team spends the most time on. Shaving 30 seconds off of something you do ten times a day is more powerful than shaving two minutes off of something you do once a week. Having the most regular processes documented ensures that everyone is completing them the most efficient way possible, and thus saving time on a frequent basis.