Session: Documentation for New People

Overview

Getting new people up to speed and handing things over.

Training someone new

• Start small - Give them easy stuff at first.
• Work together - Pair them with someone experienced.
• Don’t leave before you train a replacement - Seriously.
• Build them up - Give them bigger tasks as they get confident.

Writing things down

• Don’t over-document - Too many unclear docs is worse than no docs.
• Document why, not just what - Future organizers need to know why decisions were made, not just that they were.
• Use simple tools - Something mobile-friendly and easy to update. Something you’ll actually use.
• Write after the event - While it’s fresh. Post-mortems help.

Sharing knowledge

• Different places - Docs, chat, email. Knowledge doesn’t have to all be in one place.
• Update things - Docs get old. Refresh them sometimes.
• Show your thinking - When you write down decisions, explain what you were trying to do and what the constraints were.

Real challenges

• Too much documentation is overwhelming for new people.
• Some people learn by doing, not reading.
• You need some process but not so much that it kills creativity.