How to easily create documentation

Some undeniable truths about documentation:

• People hate to write it

• People really need it

When someone needs some help, it can consume a lot of resources, especially when a company is continually hiring new people or losing people to other teams or companies.

There are a couple types of documention:

• Simple questions and answers

• More detailed documents

The usual way things are done

Simple questions and answers are done in person or in chat, usually lost forever except to the recipient of a chat who could search their chats.

Write emails containing more detailed information to someone, a group of people, or a mailing list.

Proposed way

• For short questions and answers, create a page on your wiki (e.g. Confluence) for frequently asked questions and quickly add it after providing it to someone in email and chat.

• After sending an email, create a wiki page and paste in the contents of the email, then send out the URL to your team or whoever is asking for the documentation. I mention Confluence because i…