Why we document early and often – for our clients, and for ourselves.

Autor: Zack Wilson

Inspired by a recent project, we began to reflect on when, what, and why we document our projects. Of course, there are the obvious reasons for documenting decisions and sharing our work. But, as we got deeper into the discussion, we realized that the act of documentation itself has become integral to our process. Beyond merely being a record, it has emerged as a tool that enhances the quality of our work, strengthens collaboration, and even boosts our enjoyment of the project.

In fact, the act of documenting – and sharing documentation – in itself helps us to ensure we deliver high quality results for our clients, deliver high quality experiences for everyone we collaborate with, and ensure we enjoy our own work.

TL;DR

Documenting early and often

Start documenting early to outline outcomes

Use documentation as a dynamic template to keep track of projects

Align on goals with the project team and other stakeholders

Maintain clear project scope and prevent goal shifts

Handling teams and stakeholders

Documentation is your best tool to maintain momentum in moments of doubt

Hierarchies for decision-making increase accountability and avoid indecision

Tracking missing decision-makers is valuable to communicate to stakeholders

Know who needs to make decisions and pressure decision-makers

Documentation is not just for the client

Documenting is as much for self-motivation as the client

Process work is hard to see, communication is the only way to make people value your work

Document to live and feel the project progress

Documenting early and often (a.k.a. setting boundaries)

Setting up documentation early is maybe the most important step you can take.

The benefit of this is to force yourself to think through the project holistically, as you outline the ideal form of the final documentation. With this “ideal” project outlined, it makes your life as a designer/project manager/consultant easy:

1. Keep track of everything that is necessary using this template you built yourself,
2. Make documentation easy by simply filling out this template – you don’t need to do any more than that (but also, no less!),
3. Ensure you stay focused on the goals outlined at the start of the project, by following the steps you planned to reach them.

Of course, this outline you start with will evolve, but with experience this will happen less and less.

The primary tangential benefit of setting up a project early, is that you can return to the goals at any point – whether that is alone, with the core project team, or any other stakeholders. This maintains focus on these goals, and prevents them from shifting.

Following the goals and the documentation ensures well-defined boundaries and scope for projects. This makes everyone feel the progress of a project. With distinct goals and phases, it remains clear to all involved when milestones are met, and phases are completed. Managing stakeholders becomes simple, and they clearly see the value and high-quality work you are doing.

Handling teams and stakeholders

Diving further into stakeholder management, defining, setting, and documenting project roles is the other quick hack that uses documentation to make sure that goals and focus don’t shift – and projects maintain momentum.

Documenting your project team and key decision-makers will help maintain a hierarchy that ensures projects move forward and don’t stall out due to unanswered questions or unclear responsibilities. When questions inevitably do arise, it should be clear who must answer them. When projects are waiting on certain decisions, everyone will know who is holding up the project. Ideally, this clarity translates to more accountability.

We have found that being clear about certain roles can ensure that projects do not remain in limbo for significant amounts of time. Some key areas of interest are:

Who is responsible,

Who can answer questions,

Who is involved, and

Who needs to be kept in the loop.

In the (hopefully) rare cases that the team has to evolve due to internal changes, or any other circumstances, clearly documenting the team ensures that any open roles in projects are filled in a timely manner. Even if you can’t replace their role or decision-making power right away, communicating this missing link in the team or hierarchy has the value of making everyone aware that a key role is missing.

Finally, the types of projects we at Empatic are often brought in for, are unique in that they cross departments, or are tied into experimental, innovative, and new product ideas. There will always be a lot of tough questions and decisions that need to be made for our clients. Clear hierarchies within the team, can help resolve these questions as soon as possible – and keep everyone motivated to continue solving problems!

Documentation is not just for the client

The main audience for project documentation is of course the project requester, client, or key stakeholders you identify while setting up the project. However, the value of documentation for tracking and recognizing your own work is significant.

In our role as outside consultants and UX-trainers, we frequently find ourselves dealing with companies with lower UX-maturity, tasked with demonstrating and raising awareness for user centered thinking across teams and companies, through limited projects. Despite our hopes, it is impossible to imagine this will happen quickly.

More comprehensive documentation of these types of projects helps to show how much work goes into the process. This illustrates to all our clients the value and scope of the work we do – the real impact we are having on the business.

Last but not least, during darker days, this reminds ourselves how much work we have done. As projects start to last into months, and then years, it is easy to forget how far we have come – especially when goal posts have an unstoppable tendency to evolve over the course of the project.