I had an extremely interesting conversation with my boss today regarding documentation.<\/p>\n
I work in the IT industry and there seems to be a mistaken belief amongst some that not documenting certain processes will preserve ones job role.<\/p>\n
Maybe…<\/p>\n
To me, it illustrates couple bad things…<\/p>\n
Laziness<\/em> Poor Team Player<\/em> Fear of Peer Review<\/em> Disorganized<\/em> Earlier in this blog post I said “maybe…” and here is why, you will be stuck in a position that only you can do, where you cannot branch out, extend and grow.\u00a0 You will be stuck doing the same job, because only you can do it, whereas others can hand the job off.\u00a0 Let’s look at those characteristics from another the opposite site.<\/p>\n Organized<\/em> Welcome Peer Review<\/em> Understands being a Team Player Does (Makes) More Me personally, I would place odds on the player that documents better.<\/p>\n So what does this have to do with a blog that primarily focuses on training and weightloss.\u00a0 Well first off recall that this is a new blog and I want to add more than just weight loss, but more importantly, I want to document, my weight loss methods so people will critique me and so I can do things maybe better.<\/p>\n Hit gym today, can’t work out as hard as I usually do per Doctors orders.\u00a0 She said gradually work into it over the course of a week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had an extremely interesting conversation with my boss today regarding documentation. I work in the IT industry and there seems to be a mistaken belief amongst some that not documenting certain processes will preserve ones job role. Maybe… To … Continue reading
\nOn two levels… the first is simply one may be too lazy to document… they don’t want to open up word, sharepoint, the wiki, onenote or whatever tool you use to document what it takes to do what you did… the second is more long term, whatever process that was learned may have been difficult to find out, there may have been gotchas, nuances that made the solution very difficult to come by and now they want to rest on their laurels.\u00a0 They don’t want to learn anything else.<\/p>\n
\nThese types forge their own little empires within their workspace.\u00a0 They want people to come to them for certain tasks and want to dictate pace and workflow on their terms.\u00a0 There is is no way for this person to hand off these tribal tasks to someone else to go and run with it.<\/p>\n
\nWhen a person documents, they are declaring to the team and maybe a wider audience what they know.\u00a0 There is a fear that what they know, may be wrong, or worse, someone may have a better solution and may upstage their work.<\/p>\n
\nFailure to document usually leads to disorganization.\u00a0 If one makes a change to fix a problem today, why was it changed?\u00a0 Will you know why tomorrow?\u00a0 Will you know why next year?\u00a0 As time goes on, all that stuff in that person’s head WILL get jumbled and confused.<\/p>\n
\nWhen you document, you will show to everyone you can keep track of many things and be able to reference back to them.\u00a0 Because everything has its place and you can do more things. You can take on new more interesting projects because your manager will trust the documentation you provide will help the organization, you can do bigger more meaningful projects.<\/p>\n
\nYes it is an ego thing if you are wrong, get over it. Being a professional, I would like to know I am wrong and fix the problem so I don’t make things worse.\u00a0 You will learn how to do things more.\u00a0 Over 20 years, I have been wrong many times, I have done some stupid things, I don’t make too many errors anymore.\u00a0 So I absolutely welcome peer review because it keeps me moving towards perfection and peer acceptance.\u00a0 To me, its better to admit a mistake and make it right, then to have it blow up later down the road. Also, if something goes wrong, there will be a greater understanding of why things went wrong.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>There is this goal that an organization tries to achieve, its usually written in some mission statement, or contract, etc.\u00a0 But there is a goal and it is much easier to reach that goal if you work as a team.\u00a0\u00a0 Keeping tribal knowledge weakens the team, because you have less skills throughout to make the team strong and there is less of an understanding on what your team mates tendencies are.\u00a0 For example, say you are a great at account creation, you teach others how to create accounts, all the little details are documented, where home directories are and password requirements.\u00a0 When a user has trouble accessing their home directories, the person in charge of the file server can look at the process without the original account creator to resolve this problem more quickly.<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>Originally I titled this works hard to counter the laziness tag, but really, a person that documents properly will be able to do more and the new stuff they do will be interesting.\u00a0 Think of it from a management’s point of view, this person shows he can document, shows he can do more, shows a willingness to educate peers.\u00a0 The organization as a whole is way better off.\u00a0 This person completed this project, this person fixed this problem, this person is willing to learn, this person is willing to get criticized. Who do you think will make more?<\/p>\n