Stop Being a Software Documentation Control Freak
Just read this quote over at Signal vs. Noise by Ed Catmull, President of Pixar,
We all know the saying it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And everyone knows that, but I think there is a corollary: If everyone is trying to prevent error, it screws things up. It’s better to fix problems than to prevent them. And the natural tendency for managers is to try and prevent error and overplan things
“Preventing error” is the biggest impediment to great software documentation. One of the first questions many customers ask us is “How can we make sure that changes are approved before they are published?” This is the wrong question. Organizations believe that software documentation needs to be “proof read” and “peer reviewed”. If each change to your documentation has to go through that process then your documentation won’t ever get changed.
Your first question should actually be, “How can anyone on my team update my documentation at any time?” Your documentation needs to change. Often. Any barriers you put in place to prevent this will come at a huge cost to the usefulness of your documentation.
Unless you are documenting something that has to do with life or death or you have to comply with legal requirements stop being a control freak. Let any of your employees update your documentation at any time. If they write something that is wrong, fix it. It’s not that big a deal. If you can’t trust your employees to be responsible with your documentation then get new employees.
Putting up barriers to changing your documentation hurts your business. At the end of the day, stale, out of date documentation is much worse than a typo or two.
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