When was the last time you thought about documentation for your small business?

You may have a small, intimate team that is very familiar with the everyday going ons and where everything is -- but what happens when you need to expand and grow your team? Or worse, what happens when someone who was critical to your business leaves or has to be let go?

Granted documentation is not in any way sexy(nor is it remotely approaching any level of fun) in the context of the business world; and the IT realm is notorious for not documenting their processes and critical information. Some workers are intimidated by forms and 'business speak', while some are afraid that if things are written down it jeopardizes their job security. Some just don't like writing.

A few years back I was working with a very large pharmaceudical company on decomissioning a mainframe, and the hired Data Warehouse expert flat out refused to do documentation. This resulted in not only causing a rift in the team, a loss of respect for that worker, but ultimately got him fired. If a large corporation expects all workers to be able to document their work, so should smaller businesses.

It is critical to your business and its growth that how you do your business (from steps A to Z) and how information is used and manipulated is written down.

Here are some steps to ease the process:

1. Use a template: Create a simple, yet professional template with your company title or logo so that the reader can easily tell what the subject is about, who wrote it, and when it was last changed. MS Word has many great templates you can modify to suit your needs. And make sure your employees use them.
2. Think like a new hire: If you were just hired for your company, what information do you need? Do you need an email account? Remote access / VPN? Who are my contacts? For every type, a structured instructional should exist for who requests for what (in old change management speak it was who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) and who should be informed. A graphical chart also helps.
3. Draw up an organization chart: It doesn't matter if your company only has five people or 50. Make sure everyone understands how your business is organized and who reports to whom.
4. Collect technical resources in one place: For all of your IT resources (software and hardware) any piece of documentation (manual, instructions, even README text files) should be collected and stored in a shareable structured repository (broken out into logical directories and subdirectories that make sense), so others may refer to them as resources.

A good example is LeTip International who has a secure online repository of documentation to be used by their distributed members for their local chapters and regions.

You may start on this journey and it may be painful, especially if you're the only responsible person doing this work, but believe me -- it will be worth it as your business grows. If your organization is larger and have a great number of documents, you may want to investigate document repository systems to manage them. If there is interest in learning about some open source repository systems, let me know and I will write on them.

Hope this helps!