Documentation

It’s the end of the strategy sessions and I need to document the strategy, capabilities and action plans. There isn’t any other part of my job I hate more than this. My understanding from talking to friends is pretty even on the thought of documenting projects, models, recommendations, etc.

So really how important is documentation?

I started to think from first principles on what happens in the absence of documentations and it revealed itself to me… Earth, Humanity and everything else.

Why do we conduct research? Because we wish to know and understand things better. Isn’t there any other way to understand these things? May be talking to an expert, listening to some tapes or READING an EXECUTIVE SUMMARY? There we go documentation again!

Guess how great would it be if a document was created when the big bang occurred that explained the whole process! A document explaining the genesis of humans, another document explaining the genesis of diseases, etc., etc. Now there we go documentation is certainly necessary. But is it sufficient?

I don’t hate reading documentation as much as I hate putting one together, but I must say there are some that seem an awful waste of time! That’s the sufficiency part of documentation. A document is only good enough if a layman could read it, follow it and recreate the object being pursued, be it a model, an assembly of a cabinet, a strategy or the BIG BANG!