Internal Documentation for External Results

The text discusses the importance of internal technical documentation for organizations. It highlights how leading industry studies show that teams with quality documentation are more likely to implement security practices, meet reliability targets, and leverage Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices. The author emphasizes that while creating or improving documentation may seem intimidating, any improvement in documentation quality has a positive impact on performance. The text also provides examples of internal documentation such as readmes, runbooks, setup instructions, process instructions, and reference documents. It explains how internal documentation reduces friction for tasks, makes it easier to onboard new people, and prevents single points of failure within an organization. Additionally, the author suggests that discussing and revising internal documentation is a great moment to decide if a process is serving the team's needs. The text concludes by offering tips on how to improve documentation quality, such as including documentation as part of the software development process and recognizing documentation work during performance reviews and promotions. It also provides suggestions on how to get started with creating or improving documentation, making it automatic, and maintaining its accuracy over time.