Who Documents Business Processes? The Role of a Technical Writer in Process Mapping
There’s a question that comes up early on most programs, usually as a scheduling problem rather than a role question. Who’s actually documenting the process? The business analyst assumes it’s covered. The change team thinks it’s a project deliverable. The process owner assumed someone did it years ago. Meanwhile the technical writer has been booked […]
The Real Reason Nobody Deletes Old Documentation
Every knowledge base I’ve inherited has the same problem. Too much content, not too little. Hundreds of articles, several versions of the same procedure, material describing systems decommissioned years ago. Everyone agrees it needs cleaning up. Almost nobody actually does it. The interesting question is why, since the fix is obvious plus nobody’s arguing against […]
Every Knowledge Base Has These People
Spend enough years around documentation work, you start recognising the same characters in every organisation. Different industries, different platforms, same cast. None of them are difficult people. They’re all responding sensibly to incentives nobody designed on purpose. Recognising which one you’re dealing with tends to be more useful than any amount of governance policy. 📦 […]
Your Knowledge Base Isn’t Broken, Though Most of It Should Be Deleted
Nobody’s knowledge base has too little content. Every one I’ve inherited has too much, usually by a factor of about 3. Hundreds of articles, several versions of the same procedure, material describing a system that was decommissioned in 2021. The complaint is always that people don’t use it. The diagnosis is usually that it needs […]
What Makes a Work Instruction People Actually Use
Most organisations have plenty of documentation. What they don’t have is documentation anyone opens twice. The difference between a work instruction that gets used, versus one that gets written then forgotten, usually comes down to a handful of decisions made before anyone starts typing. Here’s what those decisions look like, plus how to use AI […]