11–20 of 110 posts
We use a gnarly WordPress install with a user permissions plugin. I hate it, but it is the only thing we've found that meets all of our needs, isn't $500/mo+, and gives our mid level managers control. We use it for everything from on-boarding, to training, to system documentation, to competitive intelligence documentation. Sure we could build something custom, but overall it works and it's given the team leaders cont…
I believe the general field of how you structure information is called "Information Architecture" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture should provide some starting point, as will searching Amazon for books on the subject. There are other strands of thought that may also be relevant. E.g. I think HR people often think about "workspace learning" or "training and development" (e.g. https://en.wikiped…
IA is part of it, but the I would say the broader term for the field is "Knowledge Management". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management Also related is the field of "Organizational Learning". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_learning It's a huge topic, and would be hard to do justice to in a HN post. There are a lot of good books on the topic. A few I'd recommend include: https://www.amazon.com…
My tips:
1. Maintain a clear single source of truth
2. Make sure everyone can contribute to it. We do this by requiring at least to edits to the handbook during onboarding
3. Embrace it as an organisation: if not everyone is committed to it, it's hard to maintain it as truth
4. Constantly iterate and improve it. Structure is highly dependent on the content.
I've found that the tool doesn't matter as much as the company culture. You need to foster a culture of documentation for EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter if you have the best tools in the world if nobody uses them. Too often this falls by the wayside because documentation of processes and preserving institutional knowledge, while extremely important, isn't the type of work that gets recognized or rewarded. If anyone ca…
In fact one of the best organization I ever lived was in a small company (There was basically a semantic document number indicating what the document was about, which revision it was and where it was stored. Each Project/Product had an index linking to the document that was maintained by hand. This even extended to software versions where you had to publish some zipped version of your software at each release.
I wonder however how it would scale...
I've found that the tool doesn't matter as much as the company culture. You need to foster a culture of documentation for EVERYTHING. It doesn't matter if you have the best tools in the world if nobody uses them. Too often this falls by the wayside because documentation of processes and preserving institutional knowledge, while extremely important, isn't the type of work that gets recognized or rewarded. If anyone ca…
If managers don't reward documentation, people won't do it. There's no magic "incentive alignment" wand, managers will either think of long term and reward maintenance work too, or will only reward shiny new work. You need topdown focus on long term sustainability of organization.
If you don't have a librarian at hand try something that forces more structure at you.
Try https://www.notion.so ! It combines docs, wikis, and todos; it's collaborative, and it's beautifully designed. It's perfect for building knowledge bases for teams. (Disclaimer / I worked there in the past)
There's no Linux download, no github, and especially, no server - I stay away from products like that, sorry.
Try https://www.notion.so ! It combines docs, wikis, and todos; it's collaborative, and it's beautifully designed. It's perfect for building knowledge bases for teams. (Disclaimer / I worked there in the past)
However, I work at a large company that has adopted Confluence, so I'm stuck with that for organizational knowledge.