Documentation debt: the interest rate is higher than you think

Documentation debt builds silently. Every time you put off updating a manual or say to yourself, “There’s no rush, I’ll just do it later!”, the interest accrues. In the end, you’re left with a documentation set that’s creating more problems than it’s solving.

Read on to learn about the different ways in which documentation debt presents itself, how it builds up, practical approaches you can take to begin paying it down, and how to avoid it in the first place.

What is documentation debt?

When content is not regularly and properly maintained, inaccurate and poorly structured information gradually piles up. The key term here is ‘gradually’; this accumulation can often go unnoticed until it’s too late.

Documentation debt can take on many forms, including:

• Factually incorrect information.
• Misaligned information; for example, images and screenshots that no longer describe the most recent version of the product.
• Inconsistent tone and style.
• Broken links and cross-references.
• Temporary workarounds that become permanent.

But why does this happen in the first place? Well, this can vary depending on the industry, organisational structure, tooling, and culture, but some general reasons include:

• Tight deadlines leading to a shift in priorities. Often, in circumstances where engineering teams are under pressure to deliver, documentation is deprioritised or treated as an afterthought. In such cases, it results in a last-minute rush to produce content that exists simply to ‘check the box’.
• Fast-paced release cycles. Particularly in agile work environments where continuous delivery is a staple, there is little time left for updating existing documentation and updates may lag behind new content for the latest product release.
• Lack of agreed-upon style guidelines to follow. Without established technical authoring standards or style guides, authors may document in inconsistent ways, using different tone, structure, terminology, and style.
• Lack of a dedicated technical authoring team. Documentation being written by members of the team who have not been trained as technical authors, more often than not, results in a patchwork of inconsistent documentation.
• Tooling limitations and fragmentation. The tools used for writing, reviewing, and publishing documentation are just as important as the documentation itself. Industry-standard tools exist for a reason!

Ultimately, documentation debt stems from a combination of short-term compromises and long-term neglect. Addressing it requires a complete cultural shift that recognises documentation as a vital, living component of the product, rather than just an optional add-on.

Signs that you’re accruing documentation debt

The challenge with documentation debt is that, unless you already treat your technical documentation as an integral part of your workflow, it can be difficult to recognise that broader, company-wide issues were caused specifically by poor technical documentation. At first glance, the issues may appear unrelated, for example:

1. Increased support calls and tickets, often with the same questions being answered on a regular basis. An increase in the volume of support tickets from your customers is a two-fold problem; first, it results in user churn, as people will give up on the product when they can’t find the answers they need. Second, it increases support overhead; more tickets = more work = higher cost for the organisation. A 1986 study by Barry Jereb for the Allen-Bradley Company found that, after implementing technical authoring best practices and redesigning their manuals, support calls fell dramatically, from more than 50 per day to only 2 per month.
2. Misuse of engineering resources. Engineers will frequently be pulled away from their core responsibilities to answer questions and clarify product functionality from other teams or from customers. Pivoting engineers into a support role is a massive waste of valuable resources and creates an information bottleneck that slows down the development cycle of your product. What could be addressed once through well-maintained documentation instead compounds and becomes a recurring issue.
3. A slowdown in customer onboarding speed. When new users attempt to use your documentation, they will struggle to efficiently get up to speed with your product. Without clear guidance, users may instead rely more heavily on support channels. This, however, may be the least of your worries. Users might also try experimenting through trial and error, which has the potential to completely break your product’s functionality, or they may abandon tasks altogether. A problematic and time-consuming onboarding phase caused by hard-to-navigate documentation turns what should be a seamless process into a barrier to adoption; it extends the time it takes for your users to reach value and lowers their trust in your product and organisation.
4. Inconsistent product knowledge internally across teams. Factual cohesion between internal teams is essential. Without it, they are left to fill in the gaps themselves, each developing a slightly different understanding of product functionality and views on how the product should be presented to customers.
   

Because these issues accumulate gradually and are sequestered across different areas of the organisation, it’s easy at first to attribute them to unrelated causes. But make no mistake, poor documentation is at the heart of the problem. When critical information is lacking, it undermines all the hard work you’ve put into the product itself and leads to frustrated users. Providing a reliable technical documentation set with your product ensures long-term product success and builds trust with your users, letting them know that you are committed to them and the product for the long term.

Paying down the debt

Now that you’re aware of the causes and consequences of documentation debt, you can actually do something about it! But where do you begin? Improving your documentation might seem like an insurmountable task but don’t fret, there are a few approaches you can take.

The recommended approach is to begin with a comprehensive content audit of all your technical documentation. Methodically review each page to ensure content is technically accurate and formatting and styling are applied consistently. To help facilitate the process, create a spreadsheet to track your findings; include key details such as page numbers, section titles, reason for update, and status. You can even create and sort the updates into categories, for ease of use and as a useful metric for future analysis. A 1995 study undertaken by the Federal Express Corporation found that, after a complete rewrite and restructure of their ground-operations manuals, users were able to locate the correct information 80% of the time, compared to a 53% success rate using the old manuals. Furthermore, the study estimated that the updated manuals would save the company $400,000 in the first year in productivity gains, just in the time employees spent searching for information.

As part of this process, it’s crucial to establish a style guide, if one doesn’t already exist. A style guide serves as a single source of truth for tone, terminology, formatting, and structure across all documentation, and ensures consistency by giving current and future authors a shared framework to follow. The guide should be comprehensive enough to cover the most common writing and formatting scenarios (for example, headings, lists, graphics, UI strings, tables, safety notices, and cross references) but flexible enough to adapt as the documentation evolves. The style guide should be referenced during audits, reviews, and content updates.

Once you’ve reviewed the documentation in its entirety and have populated the spreadsheet, the next step is to implement the changes. Use a ticketing system like Jira to create tasks, grouping them into epics (for example, by chapter or content type) before assigning them. You can also include the corresponding Jira ticket IDs, names, and links in the spreadsheet for cross-referencing and progress tracking.

On the other hand, if time and resources are limited, a modular “quick-wins” approach offers a suitable alternative to a full-scale audit and rewrite. Rather than aiming to overhaul everything at once, focus on identifying and addressing smaller, high-impact issues that can be resolved incrementally. This could include fixing broken links, updating outdated terminology, clarifying confusing sections, or standardising formatting. The key is to make consistent, manageable improvements over time, because taking small, deliberate actions is far better than doing nothing and allowing the debt to continue accumulating. Remember to stay organised with a spreadsheet and tickets in this approach too!

Once you’re done and are happy with your newly-improved documentation, whatever you do, DON’T FORGET ABOUT IT! Maintaining technical documentation is a continuous process; as long as your product is on the market, it will need documentation, so don’t fall into the same routine of neglect, otherwise the debt will build up anew and you’ll be back to square one. To ensure this doesn’t happen, implement a quarterly review cycle, during which you do a mini-audit of your documentation. Create a checklist based on the most common issues found during the initial, full-scale audit, and use it as a guide for these mini-audits.

Preventing documentation debt: a smarter, cheaper long-term strategy

When it comes to managing technical documentation, prevention is not only better than cure, it’s significantly more efficient and cost-effective in the long term. Build good practices into your documentation process from the outset and you’ll reap the benefits, without having to go through a lengthy, resource-intensive audit.

If your company doesn’t yet have a dedicated technical authoring team, now is the time to invest in one. Relying solely on engineers or product managers to write documentation, as discussed, is a surefire road to information bottlenecks and wasted resources. Professional technical authors bring a wealth of expertise in the entirety of the documentation workflow; analysis & design, tooling, prototyping, content creation, reviewing, and publishing. Even a small, centralised team is a dramatic improvement over the alternative.

Start by writing according to established technical authoring best practices. That is to say, plan your content deliberately and structure it in a way that makes it easy to adapt and update. An approach rooted in technical authoring best practices, separating content into concepts, tasks, and reference information, makes updates easier to manage and ensures each information type serves a clear purpose.

Equally important is ensuring a collaborative workflow between technical authors and engineers. Your documentation process should be integrated into the broader product development lifecycle. When authors are looped in as soon as product updates occur, documentation can be updated in parallel with the product itself, rather than last minute before release or even weeks or months later.

By embedding these preventative measures into your workflow, you reduce the likelihood of accumulating documentation debt and position your content as a reliable, integral asset for which your customers will thank you.

Tackling documentation debt isn’t about chasing perfection, it’s about committing to consistency. By recognising the hidden costs of poorly maintained content and creating a company culture that places technical documentation at the forefront of product strategy, you will put yourself in the perfect position to avoid the many pitfalls discussed in this blog. For more information on the services 3di provides and how we can help you with your technical documentation, contact us.