“The faintest pencil is better than the sharpest memory”
Documentation refers to anything written down in a place that other people can read, learn from, and further build upon. You’re reading documentation right now! It could be argued that the majority of remote work is reading and writing documentation.
Don’t forget that we operate asynchronously. The person you were going to ask might be asleep when you need an answer. Maintaining solid documentation eliminates blockers like this.
Finally, a Culture of Documentation reduces noise. Noise for our purposes is any communication that interrupts a person’s personal flow and requires a response. Noise isn’t Noice. It creates friction and slows deep work.
In other words, “Search first, ask questions later...” All of our major software tools have search functions built into them.
If you can't find what you’re looking for, only then ask about it. A quick post in #documentation is a good place to start for general queries. Let us know what you are looking for and where you've already looked.
But remember, if the answer to your question could benefit others, it's up to you to make sure it is documented properly.
| Type | Purpose | Includes | Location(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public Documentation | Provides useful (non-proprietary) information to customers, potential customers, partners, investors, employment candidates, etc. | Vlogr Website, Vlogr Handbook, Job Postings | Notion, Workable |
| Product Documentation | Provides detailed technical information about | ||
| our products. | Codebase, Manuals, API specs, integration guides | GitLab, Notion | |
| Progress Documentation | Provides framework for progress tracking and accountability of work, help requests, and people performance. | Team request boards, candidate progressions, helpdesk ticketing | Notion, Gitlab, Workable, Zendesk, Lattice |
| Process Documentation | Provides information about internal policy/procedures, onboarding, tech support guides, updates and reporting, customer relationship and marketing info. | Department pages, Loom videos, sales leads | Lattice, Notion, Google Workspace, Loom, Salesforce, Hubspot |
| Legal & Transactional Documentation | These are documents in the literal sense, i.e. those required for routine business. Includes contracts, employment agreements, service agreements, charters, entity records, etc. | Legal, Contracts, Employment Agreements | Juro, DocuSign, Notion |
| Localized Documentation | Local parameters. Collected wisdom gained by conducting business in each country. Includes local languages (other than Business English) | Country Onboarding Guides, TCE | Everywhere in various forms |
| Operations Documentation | Any documents related to operations | HR documents, Financial & Accounting documents | Dropbox, Google Spreadsheet |
Here is a breakdown of the documentation types at Vlogr and where you can find them. Remember that Notion is the Single Source of Truth(SSoT) for most data, unless otherwise specified.