Rolling Out Documentation to Your Team

When incorporating a new process in your organization, getting your team on board is just as important as the process itself. The same goes for documentation as well. Before you start rolling out documentation to your team, you must prepare in advance and take the required steps to make way for the new process. This makes the transition as smooth as possible and maximizes the success of your documentation.

We’ve outlined a few steps that can help you with the successful rollout of documentation to your team.

Engage your team

The best way to incorporate new changes in your organization is by reaching out to the people who will be directly impacted by this change. Talk to your team to understand their pain points and address their concerns before rolling it out. When you engage your team in the rollout process, you can almost certainly expect a positive outcome from them.

Choose the right documentation solution

The documentation solution you choose should be easy to implement. You need a robust and powerful solution like IT Glue that comes packed with great integration capabilities. Your solution must integrate seamlessly with your existing IT infrastructure and make life easy for all concerned stakeholders.

Work with your solution’s team

Once you have identified the perfect documentation solution, you must work with the vendor to ensure the smooth incorporation of the solution into your IT environment. If you encounter any technical issues during the rollout, the solution’s team should be on hand to make the required fixes.

Designate a rollout champion

To ensure better accountability with the implementation of the documentation process, you need to designate a rollout champion. This could be anyone in your organization including an IT manager or a project manager. This individual should be tasked with the responsibility of overseeing the rollout process and reporting its progress to the top management.

Integrate with PSA, then RMM, then SOPs and then others

Integrations are critical when rolling out a new documentation solution to your team. Your documentation should first focus on resolving customer issues. That’s why you need to first integrate it with your PSA to ensure seamless ticketing and billing. You can then proceed to document your asset information through integration with RMM. You must also integrate your solution with your SOPs to ensure consistency in your procedures across the organization.

Set permissions

By default, all users that have an account in the documentation solution can access all the documents in the database. However, you may want to give access to critical documents only to certain privileged users. IT Glue allows you to grant permissions for specific groups or individuals in your organization, which helps prevent unauthorized access to critical information.

Gamify to boost team engagement

When it comes to IT documentation, the carrot works better than the stick. Gamification of the documentation process creates more motivation to take part in it. You can associate certain game elements with specific documentation tasks that are valuable to your business. By rewarding documentation work in the initial stages, you can ensure a faster rollout of documentation in your teams.

Throw a documentation party

Who doesn’t love a party? You can apply the same concept to documentation and get your team members more excited about the process. Besides giving your team a much-need break from regular work, this also generates a buzz around the new documentation process. As a result, team buy-in will be much smoother.

Have a feedback process

Process implementation fails in many cases when you don’t understand what works and what doesn’t. Having a strong feedback process is the best way to understand what is working with your documentation. Feedback helps you identify any bottlenecks in the rollout process and allows you to smooth them out before they turn into major issues.

Iterate

Incorporating a big change like documentation is not a one-and-done affair. It requires multiple iterations to get everything right. That’s why it is critical that you choose the right documentation solution in the first place. Also, when implementing documentation, don’t just focus on your immediate needs. Choose a tool and process that can meet your future requirements as well.

To learn how IT Glue can make your documentation rollout smoother, request a demo.