Startups Stack Exchange Archive

Having a “go to” place for documentation for team members

For documentation and links to services that team members use, are there are useful practices for having one go-to place?

For example, we could register an easy to remember domain name and have it redirect to a Google Docs document.

We have SOPs written on Google Drive.

This is the scenario:

Added a new team member
Told her about Trello, Google Drive, Gmail account, the URL for our web site.
Even though this is a young person who grew up with technology, she was still tring to Google for Trello, arrived at a blog post on Trello, and found it difficult to go to Trello.

I would have simply typed in “trello.com” into the browser, but I have more context than this new person.

Tool-wise your setup seems sane:

You need Google Drive/Docs or one of the cloud-based alternatives by MS and Apple if those can work for you - Docs can be very capricious.
Trello works for task management; there are plenty of other alternatives that work too.
Don’t pass on 1Password or equivalent, else you’ll end up with passwords all over the place.

Your question suggests me that you’re building organizational debt owing to not having these additional two bits:

Some kind of wiki-like page or document (a document index, of sorts) somewhere that references key docs and folders to be aware of and what they contain. Put another way the documentation’s index and documentation.
One (or more) onboarding doc(s) that new employees should read on their first day at work. It should contain at the very least:

a to-the-point description of what your company does and how
a reference to the document index
a recommended reading list if applicable (e.g. must-read internal docs, online must-reads such as e.g. the coding style guidelines you use)
where to find a reasonably detailed org chart that highlights who are key people and what they’re are accountable for, so they know who is who and who to ask questions to
what tools your company uses with a reference to how you use it (note that how you use it may depend on the team’s manager)

To which I’d add two extra suggestions:

Give new employees the explicit task of improving your onboarding doc(s) so the next person who joins your company has an easier time than they did.
Assign a “buddy” to newcomers so the latter can ask questions as needed. This will help new employees get started a lot faster.

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