Effective Documentation and Writing Culture for Startups

Early-stage startups often have a difficult time documenting their lessons quickly and effectively, leading to a cycle of lost knowledge.

To overcome this, founders should mandate better documentation and appoint someone to lead the effort on the front lines.

Without a clear, practical direction or follow through, early-stage documentation efforts can quickly fall by the wayside.

Internal documentation is important for companies to have in order to keep users informed and keep the company running smoothly.

Changing the culture of a company can be done by addressing incentives and rewards for writing and maintaining documentation.

If a company is understaffed when it comes to documentation, hiring employees to write documentation may not be the best solution.

Instead, changing the culture may be more effective by addressing the way documentation is written and managed within the company.

To embed a strong writing culture in an organization, leaders should take writing seriously, recap meetings regularly, and get existential about their work.

One way to become a better editor of your own work is to practice and get feedback from others.

To improve your writing skills, start by recaping meetings and getting existential about your work. Then work your way up the job ladder by embedding writing expectations into job descriptions and ladders.

Documentation is important, and teams need to prioritize it.

Start by identifying the most critical topics to tackle first.

Focus on what engineers actually needed day-to-day, not just the technology du jour you think they needed support with.

Try to align most of your resources behind a narrower focus.

Resist the urge to just make assumptions about what folks need.

Focus on what engineers actually needed day-to-day, not just the technology du jour you think they needed support with.

Start by surveying engineers and identifying the most common internal questions popping up in Slack.