In any industry documentation plays an important role in establishing transparent communication. If we talk about the IT industry, then document is the first step before even stating a project. Once the thought process draws well over the papers then only project initiation comes to its existence. Do you think everyone maintaining proper documentation?
In a regular scenario, what I have noticed, the teams due work pressure or lake of interest skips the actual / proper documentation. As a result during transition, project closer, knowledge transition or audits, they had to face the heat.
There are variety of courses and methodologies available now a days, which are only making us to learn, how to be more focused over documentation. They are trying to make us understand the importance of the proper documentation. Let’s take an example: in case we need to book a reservation in train, what do we have to do? It’s simple, get the ticket and board the train. Is there any documentation involved in it? The answer is “Yes” and that documentation may be appear in the form of SMS or in the form of mail / print out. If this documentation doesn’t maintained by the railway authority, then how will you know which seat of the train is allocated / reserved for you? Similarly if we talk about the boarding a flight, the same documentation helps us to reserve our window seat.
The above two example shows the criticality and importance of the correct document. So as a lesson learnt we should spend more time during the documentation and should be much focused while preparing it. The best suggestion would be to have all the documentation reviewed prior to submission of the actual copy. Believe this will help throughout the project and the team will never face knowledge disconnect issue during any transition or migration. The team will be more confident during audits and auditors will not take much time to clear your project with A+ rating.