Teamwork · 4 min read

The engineer who documents wins twice

Once when writing it, once when someone reads it. Docs are the highest-leverage code you never compile.

Team sharing knowledge around laptops

The onboarding test

Here's my measure of a codebase: can a competent developer ship a small fix on day two without asking anyone anything? If yes, someone documented. If no, the team pays a question-tax on every task, forever — usually levied on the busiest person.

What to write (it's less than you think)

  • ✓Decision records — why this approach, what was rejected, one paragraph each.
  • ✓Runbooks — the exact commands for deploy, rollback, and the 2 a.m. scenario.
  • ✓Map, not manual — a one-page tour: where things live and why.

Writing is thinking

The first win is private: designs that survive being written down are designs that survive production. Vague ideas collapse on the page, which is exactly where you want them to collapse — cheaply, before the sprint starts.

Colleagues laughing through a documentation review Pairing over shared technical notes

Make it stick

Docs rot when they're separate from the work. Keep decision records next to the code, review runbooks like code, and delete anything untrue on sight. A small honest wiki beats a grand stale one every time.

Want a codebase new hires love?

Documentation and handover are part of every engagement I ship.

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