Automating Documentation

Tedium is the enemy of productivity. The fastest way for a task to not be done is to make it long, boring, and somewhat complicated. People who feel that something is tedious or repetitive are the ones more likely to marginalize a task. And I think I speak for the entire industry when I say that there is no task more tedious and boring than documentation. So how can we fix it?
Tell Me What You Did
I’m not a huge fan of documentation. When I decide on a plan of action, I rarely write it down step-by-step unless I’m trying to train someone. Even then, it looks more like notes with keywords instead of a narrative to follow. It’s a habit that has been borne out of years of firefighting in networks and calls to “do it faster”. The essential items of a task are refined and reduced until all that remains is the work and none of the ancillary items, like documentation.
Based on my previous life as a network engineer, I can honestly say that I’m not alone in this either. My old company made lots of money doing network discovery engagements. Sometimes these came because the Continue reading

