We've got a severe problem at my company. Management doesn't want to invest the time or resources to developing a standardized training manual, training material, or even a Lessons Learned catalog, and everytime we get a new employee it's like 6 months of them slowly picking things up before they are useful and probably a year and half before they got comfortable in their role.
Did any of you have this hurdle? And how did you get management to finally listen and invest the resources to do this properly?
6 Comments
TootSweet@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 12d
I'd say make the new person's first job to start the documentation. Who better to record what they found useful to know for their job than the one who is currently learning it. And it's much easier to get management to allow you to use for such a project the time of the employee who is still too new to really be useful in much else because they don't know shit yet.
There will never not be an issue with tribal knowledge. It's the nature of... work, basically. But it's helpful to have a place to point someone new.
Also, I'll say that sometimes managers have to be protected from themselves on a forgiveness-rather-than-permission basis. If you start such documentation in secret and just do a bit here and there as part of other things that you're doing (like, when you do something that requires XYZ tribal knowledge, document the XYZ knowledge) on a regular basis, you'll be surprised how quickly it adds up and how easily you can justify the "misappropriation of resources" as part of the task you were assigned. Can't hurt to sandbag a bit when estimating how long a task will take ahead of time to give yourself time to do the documentation along with it.
I mean, be smart. Don't jeopardize your job. It's valid to just let the management dig their own grave even deeper and collect a paycheck. If they suffer from their own incompetence, so be it. Try to learn to make peace with it. But also, if your happiness and well being would be helped by fixing the problem of tribal knowledge, do whatever you have to to make it happen under the managers' noses so long as the payoff is worth the risk.
As for how much tribal knowledge there is where I work, we've done a fair amount to address it and it's a lot better than it could be. But I don't think any team ever manages to document "everything" (whatever "everything" means).
trolololol@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 12d
This
I'd suggest framing this as a solution. Such as: before you begin the task, I need x hours to create some notes of the procedure and links to the certification docs. Oh btw I made it as a template so next time we can duplicate this file and fill in the blanks.
Same with newbie: oh I asked the newbie to take written notes, because it's very common for a new hire to ask the same question multiple times until they get independent. Oh btw the next hire can just read and tweak these notes. No, it doesn't completely replace me supervising them, it just makes it faster. Etcetc
Alteon@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 12d
We have Quality Documentation and flowcharts of what processes are to be performed, but how we specifically handle those processes is lacking. If we lost our senior engineers, the whole thing would come crashing down. We have no searchable database of past projects, so you can't easily search for similar designs unless someone specifically knows what project code to give you. Our drawing practices are not standardized. We have dozens of excel sheets that document critical information but there's no organized locations for any of them. Any attempt to organize our materials database gets shot down as a waste of time.
The list goes on and on...
TootSweet@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 11d
Ah. Is there no company wiki? (Like a Confluence or even Mediawiki or something where you can just go... make a new page and type things that everyone else can see?) Do you have a company Git host like Bitbucket or Gitlab or something, and if so, does it have "gists" or "snippets" or something like that? (I know Bitbucket has snippets.)
Without knowing more about how the tech is set up where you work if you don't have a network share available, you might be able to literally put a shared directory on one of your work machines where all the documents live. You might be able to search that via the Windows filesystem search feature.
A git repo may work as well. Git and large files don't really get along, and I don't know how big these files are, but if it's the best you have to work with, it's far better than nothing.
So, I guess what I'm saying is: if you just find a place to dump files that lets you either search the contents or share the whole set of files with everyone on the team so they can search the files locally, that may be the option that's near zero effort/time and will at least give you... not a "database" per se, but at least a searchable repository.
vrek@programming.dev · 5 pts · 12d
Depends on what you do and what is needed. Do you have a stable process and just monitoring and fixing issues? If so I would make some unofficial documentation, atleast for myself. "when the microcontroller on the tubing machine gives error p005, press the r button, then up two times, press the p button till it shows 0.00, turn off system, wait 30 seconds, turn it back on." that's actually pretty damn close to notes I've written.
I know anti-microsoft feelings are common these days but I loved one note for this. I had a one note for each machine, 1 section for information (machine number, software version work instructions etc) one section for common documents (verification template, latest report etc), one previous issues(self explanatory), one for how-to(instructions for clearing a jam in a plastic injection machine). These were hosted on a public(to company employees) network drive. The issues were written in real time. "I tested x no change, I tested y, no change, I tested z, results got worse, I tested a and it finally works". Useful for multi-day troubleshooting(6am me: shit, did I test y yesterday.. Check notes... Yes I did) and also when a similar issue comes up 2 years later.
We also had a complex verification process and all documents we really only find able by number. So for example the template for a installation verification may be "12-3456" and the template for report was 12-3457 but if you had software you also had to verify that with a template at 876543210, oh your software also has a configuration file that has to be verified by 12345678. I made a flowchart to document the proper flow and all required documents. I also had a excel sheet for each work instruction on each production line. I literally go tired of answering these questions so I made a new_engineer.zip file I sent to new engineers. None of this was official but it helped me and helped other people so I created it anyways.
If you are doing design that's out of my wheelhouse so I don't have advice.
BCsven@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 12d
Yes many companies I have been at. Most just want everything looking good each quarter instead of taking the hit and climbing out on top in the long run.
Best turn around I saw was company brought in a manager with an overarching goal. Standardize software, standardize training, documentation, categorize projects into similar classes, change incentives for employees. After a few years they were more productive and dropping in new recruits easier, but also had 75% reduction in rework.