007. Documentation Is How You Scale

In the last letter, we covered the importance of becoming less necessary so that your team requires less of your time and effort to accelerate productivity. This letter covers how to do that in a sustainable and beneficial way. It may just be the most important chapter of all.

Most leaders understand the importance of documenting knowledge and processes, but too often de-prioritize writing things down in favor of writing more code. This is a short-sighted and misguided approach. It consistently results in large tech debt, poor knowledge transfer, and the team's reliance on one person to have all the answers (usually you).

That said, simply writing down more things isn't the answer either. It's important to know what to write down, who to write it for, and perhaps most importantly, where to put it. The good news is, as long as you remain consistent, these habits are quick to instill in a team and instantly beneficial to everyone — especially new hires.

Better, consistent documentation for my teams meant less time spent hunting for information and more time spent producing — which made for both happier developers and development leaders alike.

Let's see how.