Long-term Documentation Maintenance
summary
Organisation uses an ITSM-backed record system that tracks 584 resources (121 past review) and enforces review cycles to hit a ~90% reviewed target; historically 600 tracked items yielded only 380 actual pages and ~30% reviewed. Strategies combine scheduled enforced review, metrics-directed review, self-documenting code, doc generators and user-triggered reports. Enforcement works by assigning review tasks and escalating to managers via email, which drives cultural change so outdated content becomes rare and maintenance workload spreads into manageable, recurring tasks.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction and me
- 1:44What is documentation
- 3:09Technology won’t save us
- 3:31Criteria for good strategies
- 6:02Self-documenting code
- 9:53Structured content
- 11:18Documentation generation
- 13:02Good record-keeping
- 14:49Dedicated documentation team
- 15:52Small-scale strategies
- 21:04Large-scale strategies
- 26:48Grand unified theory
- 28:36Summary and conclusion
- 29:04Q&A session
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