Using Documentation to Overcome Hybrid Work Friction

In a hybrid work environment, where communication can be more challenging, effective documentation is crucial for teams to stay aligned, productive, and successful.

Leaders are discovering the hurdles that come with managing a hybrid team. One area that can be particularly difficult to navigate in a hybrid environment is documentation. When team members are working in different locations and on different schedules, it can be difficult to ensure that important information is being documented and shared effectively.

What is hybrid work friction

Hybrid work friction is the difference between optimal performance in the office versus the actual performance of a hybrid team. When working remotely, we lack the information sharing that happens in-person and informally, when we are in the office. To make up for this we need to improve our documentation capabilities.

Hybrid work friction happens when:

• Information is lost or is not available to those who need it, because it was not documented.
• Outdated information leads to confusion, mistakes, and miscommunication.
• People end up spending more time trying to figure out what is current instead of actually getting work done.
• Everyone has different ideas about how tasks should be done or problems should be solved because there was no clear documentation.
• New team members experience issues getting up to speed because information is only held by one or two people.
• New joiners struggle to understand the culture because it has not been documented.
• Someone who knows a lot about something leaves, all that knowledge just disappears.

Single Source Of Truth

If done well, documentation keeps things organized in a hybrid work environment and helps your team collaborate effectively. GitLab is the king of remote work and they know a thing or two about documentation. They believe that good organizational documentation should be the blueprint of how the business runs - the "single source of truth" for all team members, customers, and other community members.

A single source of truth means all relevant information about how our team works and what we do is kept in one place, actively maintained and regularly updated.

So, what kind of information should be included in our single source of truth? Think about what you would want to know if you just joined the team: team member details, team agreement, team processes, recruitment process, onboarding process, past meeting notes and outcomes, technology setup and resources, team product and project roadmaps, and career development paths.

Documentation structure

When it comes to effective documentation, every document should have:

• An owner, who is the one person ultimately responsible for the doc
• A list of people who are collaborating on the document
• An audience - is it company-wide, project or team specific; internal, external for customers, or external for the whole web?
• A cadence - what is the workflow for updating the document?
• A lifespan - is it for a single project or meeting where it has a fixed lifespan or is it evergreen?
• An explanation of if and how people can contribute to the document

Companies should also provide training and resources to help team members understand the importance of documentation and how to do it effectively.