Documentation Database Report
Client: Business consulting firm in search for a more efficient way to document, onboard and communicate amongst teammates worldwide.
Brief: Study to understand role specific needs for onboarding, documenting and performing within a corporation to best perform SOW and work efficiently with peers.
Project: UX Research for Knowledge Hub Documentation
Research Goals:
Understand current documentation process by team
Comprehend pain points and frustrations with current documentation process
Identify a template that consistently meets each team’s requirements
Methodology:
Unmoderated survey to gauge user’s overall satisfaction rate with onboarding and documentation process before deep-diving into user interviews.
45-60 minute virtual interviews over Microsoft Teams
Warm Up: 5 minutes
Deep Dive: 25 minutes
Artifact Feedback: 15 minutes
Participant Profile:
6 total participants
Mixed roles working on LinOS team
High level understanding of each team’s current documentation process and team specific needs.
Overall Findings:
While onboarding, most participants recall the process being messy with information in multiple places including sharepoint, confluence and slack. One question answered leads to another with an uncertainty of who to ask for specific questions, documentation, or tool access. Onboarding was mostly self reliant as users tried to find documentation themselves.
“Documentation is one of the biggest pain points with the project”
“When you get enrolled, there’s no clear documentation telling you how to set up, where to look for tickets, who to talk to etc.”
“We know there is documentation but we don’t know where it is or who to ask for it. Sometimes we don’t even know what has been created”
Common pain points with current process:
No one appointed to maintain documentation
Outdated documentation
Messy organization/difficulty finding specific searches
Documentation going unreviewed. “Documentation needs to be reviewed, not only by us but we need support from other teams.”
Communication lacking “Sometimes we have documents but no one knows where to find them. We know it’s in confluence but don’t know where and how to look for it. It’s a mess”
Common Requests/recommendations:
Background on Corporation and the company AI app
Tasks along with a description and app area
List of BAs for each project area
List of specific people for project area (PMs, designers, developers, etc)
List of tools/software required to perform tasks along with instructions (ex: Figma, postnotes, excel etc)
Roadmap that includes current state, project goals and dates of expected completion
List of meetings and what they pertain to
Tagging tickets in Jira with common keywords so they’re easily found and linking them in confluence by app/team
Ticket lifecycles
Team Specific requirements:
Developers:
1. Document with instructions on setting up environment
2. Background, Roadmap, Tasks, Tickets, Figma Links, Diagrams (quoemo), and postman collections
Scrum Masters:
Background, Organizational Structure, Roadmap, Tasks, Figma Links, Ceremony Requirements, Retro Notes, project leadership priorities, tools needed, and who to contact for access to links
BAs:
Onboarding with basics including Background, tasks and app areas, organizational chart, tools used and meetings planned
“This chart may not work for BAs. Our main form of documentation is the tickets. If we’re trying to include a knowledge hub then I think as BAs we can improve on what we have through updating information. Slack works well for us.
Tech Leads:
Instructions on setting up based on OS
Background, Roadmap, Key people, Jargon list, Tasks, Tools, Link to Jira tickets, Figma and prototype links
Support:
1. Background, Instructions for logging into different systems, roadmap, organizational chart, Travel expectations/instructions for booking, Tasks/app areas, Expectations for onsite/remote work, Tools needed, Key people with contact information, prototype links, Jira Tickets tagged under common keywords, Teams to reach out to in relation to support issue (Data science, AAPI, WCS, Operations, process control people, traffic) along with shift details and a description of what they handle
QA Team:
Background, Key people/contact information, Tools used, Scripts for tasks, Instructions for deploying scripts
Recommendations:
Onboarding documentations within Confluence database to include background, app description, instructions upon initial individual setup.
Ongoing documentation for team specific needs delegated to each team lead.
