How to get started on your company's internal documentation

Documenting information is one of the most important internal tasks a company can undertake.However,most companies still regard any user documentation they have to produce as a necessary evil,leave alone internal documentation. Ironically, most information technology companies are often lacking in information about themselves: processes, routines, infrastructure and networks.
Internal documentation is crucial to your company. Learn how to take it from a concept to development and implementation of an internal print or online library.
The first part explains how documentation can help you when employees leave and when new workers arrive. We also include tips to begin your own documentation process.

Why is documentation important in an IT company?
With job opportunities bombarding IT professionals, an IT company always runs the risk of losing key employees. Much of the knowhow essential to the company's success usually exists in the heads of only a small number of people.
Companies need to make sure that losing someone won't cripple them or place a huge burden on the rest of the staff and contribute to further losses. Besides smoothing the transition, internal documentation also makes it easier for people to delegate tasks or take time off;all without causing a crisis for the rest of the team.
You may not know it, but many of your new hires sit at their desks doing nothing for days. That's because everyone else is too busy to tell them what to do or give them orientation. They're twiddling their thumbs and watching their new coworkers, possibly wondering what they've gotten themselves into.
One important function of internal documentation is to create introductory material. This not only keeps new employees occupied but also tells them more about how the company works. Such information can cover both their team and other groups. It gives them a head start on their new responsibilities.Creating specific documentation, oriented directly towards the new person's job, is an excellent way to reduce downtime for new hires. It also decreases the time your existing staff must spend to bring the new person up to speed.

Beginings
If you begin an internal documentation project, don't think of it as documenting only information. It's important to capture and convey how people use that information. A project like this should be regarded as management of your company's intellectual property. You want to document how things happen at your company-who does what and what tools do they use. Start by thinking about the following questions:
What are the key processes? You can start by breaking it down by department. Then how is this process completed? Why and when is it done? Who has key responsibility for internal business issues? Who are your key partners and contacts at other companies?
Where are crucial files stored? What are your standard business processes? Your organizational structure? Good documentation should also address how and why people do what they do.
Documenting internal processes helps prevent people from having to "reinvent the wheel." If you have a successful process for doing something, make sure that everyone knows it. They won't have to spend time duplicating processes that already exist.
Documentation helps reinforce standardisation and it enables people to repeat successes and avoid the mistakes others have made.

Internal documentation: Avoiding critical mistakes

In the first part, we examined the importance of creating and maintaining comprehensive internal documentation for a company's procedures and critical information. Now we read about defining the information to document and why such projects often fail.
The first step towards creating internal documentation is to define what you want to accomplish. Find out if your company has the people and time resources to undertake such a project. To document all the processes and information within your company, it could take a year or more to define, develop, test, verify and implement.
A crucial element of this wide-angle look is to broadly define project goals. What do you want the documentation to do? Shorten the ramp-up time for new employees? Document critical processes in the event that key people leave? Improve productivity? Ideally, the finished project will do all of this. However, if you want to keep the scope small, you'll need to limit the goals to those that are most important. This is because the degree of work involved in creating comprehensive internal documentation, much less updating and maintaining it is tremendous.More often than not,someone in management decides it would be a good idea to document "all the company's stuff" and assigns the project to someone else without considering the effort involved or getting input from those responsible for providing their time.As a result, the project ends up being so incomplete or obsolete that it doesn't do anybody any good.

Basically, the reason for failure has two components:
Lack of Definition:The processes and procedures to document are never analysed, and there is little or no thought given to the information itself, its format, or how it will be utilized.
Lack of Employee Inputs:Obtaining comprehensive, detailed information necessary for a successful project requires a lot of time from the person who has that information.If the decision is made without consulting the people who have to contribute their time to the project, they don't make the effort because they consider documentation to be their very lowest priority.Hiring a consultant or team of consultants to undertake the documentation does not make existing staff redundant.
Factors to be considered before embarking on an internal documentation project include beginning by analysing the content and scope of the project. This will affect the other decisions you need to make. Start by making a rough outline of the information you want to document. A department-by-department approach with the key players and their critical functions is recommended. Once you have a draft of what you hope to achieve ready, conduct informal meetings or departmental brainstorming sessions. Ask questions like "What standard processes do you carry out on a r egular basis?" "What are the parts of your job that only you know how to do?" "If you took a two-month vacation, what would the other people in your department need to know in order to fill in for you?"
Unfortunately, some people don't want anyone to know exactly what they do or how they do it.They regard the fact that only they know how to do their job as a way of keeping their job secure. People with this attitude are a major stumbling block in the information-gathering process.Make it clear that you expect people to share information.
Then decide whether to use internal staff or consultants. Once you define the project scope, you'll know the skill set necessary to carry it out. You can now decide whether to assign the project to outsiders or your existing staff.If you already have technical writers with time on their hands,make sure that they know how to handle a project like this.The process involves documentation and interviewing as well as writing,so you may want to supply them with books or even training on knowledge management. Alternatively,you might consider hiring contractors who you can release after the project is complete.Doing so maintains control and direction of the project within your company.
But whether you decide to use consultants or in-house staff, if your company is sizable and you're serious about knowledge management, you'll want to have at least one person dedicated to this project both during and after its initial completion. If you use a consultant or consultants, we recommend that you team that person up with one of your internal writers who can take on the job of maintaining the documentation.

Refining and maintaining your internal documentation project

So you've decided to embark on your internal documentation project. What formats and tools should you use to complete the task? How do you initiate, implement and maintain the project?In this article, we'll take a look at how you should proceed.
Identify the best documentation format-
During your department meetings to set the documentation scope, identify how people will use the information. From that, you decide on a format.
Although the document format can be changed after the project begins, it's best to settle on one up front.

Here are a few choices:

• Printed documentation: Having printed documentation can be a good idea if you will be documenting detailed or lengthy procedures. For printed matter you'll need a central physical location or at least a "team library," that everyone can access.If your procedures are constantly changing,it is better not to rely on print alone
• Online documentation: Online documentation is recommended if the project is very modular and can be divided into fairly short sections that are not interdependent.
  This approach works well if much of the documentation will be accessed only occasionally, if the information changes often, or needs to be further customised for use by any individuals or groups. If your company has an existing intranet, online documentation is a good choice.The lack of an intranet can make it difficult to implement any documentation project that's exclusively online.
• Printed and online: Many companies use a mix of printed and online documentation. This works well if the most frequently used and updated information is in the form of brief reference material. Anything that needs to be printed out, such as a checklist, can be done at a workstation. Longer, less changeable documents can be printed out and stored in a central location.
  You should also take into account the way people at your company prefer to receive information.One benefit of online documentation is that it can easily be printed and read.

Choose your tools
Once you settle on a format, Any of the following tools can be used for creating the documentation.

1. Microsoft Word: For print documentation, the default choice is generally Microsoft Word. Despite its many limitations, most people already know how to use it and it's adequate for the job.
   Adobe Acrobat: A PDF format is useful for printing as well as online display.You can convert word documents into PDF format.
2. HTML editor: If you want to take the documentation online by posting to the company intranet, you should use the HTML editing program employed for the rest of your site. This will make it easier for both designers and users.
3. Version-control software: If more than one person has access and authority to update these documents, some type of version-control software is a must. Most IT companies are already familiar with Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, which is used for programming code. SourceSafe can be adapted to any kind of document to allow it to be checked in and out and to keep a record of who updates what.
   Depending on the information you're documenting, a database arrangement could also work well.