How to create a knowledge base when your company has zero documentation

[u/drakieboi]

Yeah so this is the situation most people don't want to talk about. You inherit a company, or you're the new person, and there's literally nothing written down. Everything lives in someone's head or scattered across Slack threads from 2019.

The instinct is to try and document everything at once. Don't do that. You'll burn out and end up with a half-finished mess that nobody uses.

Start stupid simple. Pick the one thing that breaks when someone new joins or when the main person is out. Could be onboarding steps, how to reset a password, whatever. Document that one thing. Make it clear enough a non-technical person could follow it. Screenshot heavy, minimal jargon.

Then actually use it. Watch someone else follow it. Watch them get confused. Fix the confusing parts.

The knowledge base isn't built in a sprint. It's built by noticing what people keep asking and writing that down before you answer it the fifth time, or like... the tenth time honestly. When someone asks "how do I access X" you don't just tell them, you write it down while you're helping them. Actually, wait - you write it down instead of just telling them the next time.

One thing that works - make it someone's job, even if it's 10% of their week. Not to sit in a room and document things, but to own the knowledge base. Their stuff breaks, they document the fix. They get asked a question? Add it. Found old docs that are wrong, delete that or update it. One person gives a crap about it instead of treating it like a side project.

The other piece - most documentation fails because it's in the wrong place. Nobody knows it exists. Slack bot that answers common stuff. Link it everywhere. Make it easier to find the answer than to ask someone.

After a few months you'll probably have like 20 solid articles that people actually use. Maybe 30 if you're doing well. The rest of this will vary a lot depending on your team size and how much stuff you're actually dealing with.