📄 Writing documentation is boring and unnecessary

Boring? Maybe.
Unnecessary? Disagree.

⏲ In the refinement you spend 15 minutes trying to remember what a ticket was about that was written a month earlier.

⏲ A stakeholder asks why their bug ticket was cancelled without a comment. You need to track down the reason.

⏲ A developer is on sick leave, and we have no idea what the status of their work was. It needs to wait until he is back.

⏲ You come back from vacation and want to catch up on some project meeting notes, to know what has been going on. But there are none. You have to ask around.

⏲ …

Any of that sound familiar?

At our project it happens all the time. And it causes us to lose time, information and knowledge. It even leads to general lack of transparency and major misunderstandings…

What’s more, time after time it is discussed in the retrospective and other „inspect and adapt“ meetings. Everyone agrees we must document. And then it just happens all over again…

🙄 I understand that documenting tickets, meetings, code is not the most exciting part of our job. And we want to be quick and productive, with a „just do it“ approach.

Even the agile manifesto says „Working software over comprehensive documentation“, right?

Right. But that does not mean we don’t need to document at all.

The advantages of proper documentation are, in my opinion, huge:

•          Enhanced Clarity and Focus
•          Improved Communication
•          Easier Onboarding and Knowledge Transfer
•          Quality Assurance
•          Efficient Project Management
•          Improved Risk Management
•          High Traceability

🤔 So why do we keep falling into the „I’ll do it later (or not)“ trap?

👉 How do you manage documentation in your projects? Are you facing similar challenges? Do you have tips for us how to handle it better 🙏

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