66. Don’t Wait Until You Quit To Document

October 6, 2022

This week, our heros discuss the tricky situation of not figuring out what your co-workers do until it's too late, waiting until a week or two before they quit. You better not screw this up!

What do we do when someone on our team quits? Do we know exactly what they were doing? Do we know where they left off? How easy would it be for you to pick up where they left off and continue the work?

It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day rhythm of whatever it is we do for a living. Inevitably though, someone on our team will leave for one reason or another. The chances of getting decent documentation or adequate knowledge transfer a week or two before your coworkers are gone forever is pretty unlikely.

Hopefully, you don’t want to put your co-workers in a position like this. So, do your future self, and your future coworkers, a favor. Document! Document! Document!

Don’t wait until the last minute to document and share the processes you follow and the work that you do. Normalize documenting and sharing, so everyone on your team has some idea of what everyone else is up to.

Topics:
• 8:24 – What do we do with the inevitability of attrition?
• 10:39 – We’re all fairly replaceable
• 13:05 – Lost tribal knowledge is very harmful
• 13:57 – Lean’s concept of Standard Work is helpful for documentation
• 17:53 – The today you will be more familiar with a problem than later you
• 18:52 – The pain of the KT is always the rush and urgency
• 19:34 – Derek’s tips for documenting
• 29:14 – How often do we analyze the work we do?

Helpful Links:
Federation HQ
Conan Gray
Passion Pit

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Episode thumbnail by Callum Shaw on Unsplash