What are the benefits of using documentation as a support tool?

Documentation serves as a invaluable support tool by providing clarity, consistency, and efficiency. It acts as a knowledge repository, capturing best practices, troubleshooting steps, and solutions. This aids in onboarding, enabling new team members to quickly grasp processes. Documentation ensures uniformity in support responses, reducing errors and enhancing customer satisfaction. It serves as a reference during complex problem-solving, speeding up issue resolution. Documented procedures promote accountability and continuity, even during team transitions. Ultimately, documentation is a cornerstone for effective support, fostering collaboration and elevating the overall quality of assistance provided.

Using documentation as a support tool offers numerous benefits such as clarity, onboarding assistance and guidance, etc. The main contribution is Improved User Experience. A well-designed and user-friendly documentation enhances the overall user experience by providing valuable guidance and support throughout the user journey. It instills confidence in users, promotes self-reliance, and fosters positive perceptions of the product or service.

Documenting procedures and troubleshooting is something all professionals should do. Especially when it comes to cases that involved many hours of research and had complex solutions. I have already saved many hours of work by consulting documentation that I had created a long time ago, because when I faced the situation in a new opportunity I did not remember which solution was applied. However, I had documentation that explained the context of the problem and which solution was applied. As a result, a problem that consumed 5 hours of a working day was resolved in 10 minutes the second time it happened.

Documentation serves as the cornerstone of knowledge sharing, providing a structured and accessible way for teams to learn from one another. It not only preserves valuable insights and processes but also reduces reliance on individuals, ensuring that critical information is retained even in times of turnover or change. Proper documentation streamlines onboarding, enhances productivity by reducing the time spent on troubleshooting, and empowers team members to solve problems independently. In today’s fast-paced environment, clear and well-maintained documentation fosters a culture of learning, drives innovation, and supports sustainable growth across any organization.

When you have reliable, updated and accessible documentation, the people involved are grateful and admired, as most professionals do not document it. Some can memorize, but tacit knowledge benefits no one. Others don't document or memorize, so they are always spending time researching and applying different solutions to the same problems. Explicit knowledge prevents people from relying on you to solve problems that they can solve on their own just by following the document. If you are unavailable, the work will continue to be carried out. You also have the freedom to take on new activities.

Whoever teaches is also learning. When exposing knowledge in a document you need to organize the information and make the information clear so that other people outside the context can understand it. During this process you can improve your understanding.

Creating and maintaining documentation is a critical aspect of ensuring clarity, knowledge transfer, and efficient operations. There are multiple steps one has to take to ensure a well maintained documentation. Such as scheduling regular reviews and updates to keep the documentation up to date. Setting reminders to revisit and revise content as needed, reviewing change logs, especially after product updates or changes.

Documentation in an important aspect of application support, that is often not taken care as it needs to be. Different type of documentation helps different teams. A knowledge article helps business users to resolve an issue without raising a fault; a support matrix & known issue document aids IT HelpDesk / L1 support; playbooks & run books help application support team with their BAU tasks; architecture diagrams and solution documentation helps in application handover to support team. Also the documents should be prepared based on their purpose and target audience so that they are effectively used.