Poorly maintain reference materials in any organization create frustration and headaches. It gets even worse when you’re the person who has to update or maintain those reference materials.
Having worked in organizations where standard procedure documentation was either non-existent, housed in uneditable PDFs, or kept by individual employees on their portion of the company network, I always try to create documentation that counters each of these potential issues.
Make It Exist
Small teams may prefer the illusory agility of operating without documentation, simply knowing when something looks or feels right for the given project. Unfortunately, this can lead to drift in common practices, degrading the customer’s or end-user’s experience. This also makes it much more difficult to onboard new team members, as everyone must now figure out how to communicate the practices that everyone has internalized.
I use whatever avenues are available to create documentation in a public space, calling for regular reviews and discussion to ensure it is always up to date. The example to the right is a Sharepoint site, but I have also used Google Drive or Dropbox space or public websites to ensure knowledge is always accessible.
Make It Editable
The key to maintenance is the actual, functional ability to maintain. That seems like an obvious statement, but consider how many organizations keep documents only in PDF format or only in printed materials.
Good knowledge management should involve simple processes for editing and updating material. Web content offers a direct route to this goal: I have been in plenty of team meetings where a reference document was found to be out of date, and a web-based storage system meant we could update it immediately rather than search for a PDF’s or printed document’s source file (or re-create it entirely).
The caveat here is there must be a process for updating and keeping notes about those changes, so reference material is only updated with true and valuable information, not just the whim of an individual contributor.
Make It Public
This should go without saying, but the maintainability of a document is tied to knowing whether or not it needs maintenance to begin with. Keeping reference material in a space that is public and easily accessible ensures that everyone can find what they need when they need it—or that they can be directed to a reference when they don’t know they need it.
