This week, I am a documentation hypocrite

Alysha Khan • public
• 3 min read

Over the course of my consulting career, I have told many a client and stakeholder and fellow consultant about the importance of documentation.

The importance of creating documentation, updating documentation, reviewing documentation, etc. etc. etc...

And this week, I'm behind on creating documentation for multiple clients.

So here's my game plan for getting caught up.

Step 1 - Outline

I'm blocking 45 mins on my calendar and speed run outlining each piece of documentation I need to create. I'm going to allocate 5 mins for the shorter pieces and 10 mins for the longer piece. The goal here is to turn the giant boulder into chunkable, manageable pieces of work.

I find timeboxing tasks that I'm procrastinating on to be ridiculously helpful because then:

  • The task feels much less scary when I know I only have to spend X minutes doing it.
  • And when I know I only have X minutes, I am much, much less likely to fall down rabbit holes, stress over random details and otherwise waste time.

Step 2 - Rough Draft

For each chunk I have created, I am going to again speed run creating a V1 draft and allocate about 15 minutes per chunk. For this V1, there's a few ways to tackle this:

  • You can just write out the good old-fashioned way.
  • If you have more time than me, you can delegate this to a junior team member. A little documentation practice never hurt anyone.
  • There is a hundred percent a way to prompt AI to compile a V1 but I'm not the right expert to provide specifics here.
  • You can record yourself talking through it and then use any meeting recorder to generate a transcript and use that are your V1.

At the end of the rough draft, you also want to able to clearly identify what screenshots, diagrams, links and videos you will need to complete the document.

Step 3 - Create the Supplementals

Now I am going to tackle creating and compiling all the screenshots, diagrams, links and videos I need.

Because I'm currently in a time crunch, I'm most likely going to make my diagrams, record myself talking through the diagram and then use the transcript for the written part of my documentation and also link to the recording itself.

For screenshots, I like to take them on my biggest monitor and also mark them up to make sure it's clear what I want people to pay attention to in the screenshot.

And for links, I'm going to spend time tracking down all the other pieces of documentation and reporting (especially SFDC) that need to be cross-linked. I will most likely be grabbing the Marketo/HubSpot links during the next step cause I can easily find them.

Step 4 - Final Polish

Time to pull it all together 😎 At this point, you should basically have everything you need and this step is all about making sure all the disparate pieces make sense as a whole.

I am going to lightly reword my V1 as needed, add in my diagrams and screenshots into the flow of the document, add in all my links, and add in the little touches like a table of contents, headings, page numbers, etc.

Lastly, I'm going to put aside some time to walk away from the document and then come back to it for a final read-through with fresh eyes.

Wish me luck y'all 😂

Tips for the coming week

  1. If you are actively behind, try deploying my method above and let me know how it goes.
  2. If you want to be more proactive about your documentation needs, check out the many amazing resources from Jen Bergren.

🫶🏽 Alysha

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