Document all of the things!

August 2, 2021 9:31 AM

I'm finally handing a big data entry task off to a capable co-worker. Yay! I have to document the whole process. Boo! Doing the task while pausing after every step to screenshot and explain it is tedious and I absolutely hate it. Is there a way to frame this in my mind to make it fun or interesting?

I resolved my last work issue and was able to shave at least a day off the whole process, and my boss is very happy, which makes me happy. In order to meet this new deadline, I'll need to hand off a large data entry task to a co-worker who came back from furlough. I like and respect this co-worker and I know she'll learn to do this just fine. I need to document the process for her: it involves running reports in two separate areas of Oracle, exporting each one, saving it to shared folders and then pulling the info from one report into another Excel sheet, and then entering data into that second sheet.

I know that documenting this is helpful on many levels: walking my co-worker through the process; having steps on file to follow in case I get hit by a bus; making the company aware of my responsibilities come review time; and so on. And of course, this is not the first time I've had to document my work as I've been doing this for years for various processes. However, I can't overcome anymore the tedium of take one step, stop, print screen, paste into Word, explain the step, repeat. I dislike it so much it actually makes me physically queasy. In my head, while I'm doing it, I start taking on a singsongy, condescending voice ("Now copy these rooooows, and paste them heeeere... verrry goooood!") that only feeds my irritation further. I suspect this is some strain of ADHD, but my therapist does not think I have ADHD and would likely chalk this up to some form of anxiety. Is there any way to gamify this or otherwise make it fun to think about instead of gritting my teeth?

posted by Recliner of Rage to Work & Money (11 answers total)

in the immediate sense, can you (say) record a screenshare (Teams/Zoom/Whatever) and walk through the process, and then just screenshot the video to make the document? You can make the skeleton with a bunch of screengrabs, and then add text as your brain will let you without overheating. (or make your replacement write the text as step k of n, and you can review that text to make sure it's clear rather than going bonkers trying to write it.

In a longer-term sense, Karen Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog has an anecdote about how she trained herself to go to class after a long day of work: if you turned towards school, instead of home, upon leaving the office, treat! If you got on the school-bound train instead of going home, treat! When you enter the school building, treat! When you sit down in class, treat! After a couple of nights, all those neurons were wired together and it just cost her a couple bars of dark chocolate. Can you give yourself a small treat every screenshot or 10, or page of documentation, or 15mins of focus, or ... something? This works even if your conscious brain KNOWS what you're up to.
posted by adekllny at 9:42 AM on August 2, 2021

This is part of my job, and at my company what we do is record a walkthrough on Zoom with transcription turned on, edit the transcription into a document, go back through the recording and screenshot from there (including, occasionally, making gifs to show a set of steps). It is its own kind of tedium but I have to say it has a ton more flow than the old-fashioned way, especially because it means I can prepare my demo environment really nicely in advance and it's all just THERE for me to retrieve quickly from the recording.

It can be nice to have a colleague jump on and be your "audience" for the recording, so you don't rush through anything (my biggest issue when I do my own recordings).
posted by Lyn Never at 9:44 AM on August 2, 2021

I would suggest splitting this into parts versus trying to do the whole documentation process one step at a time. I start by doing a screen recording of you doing the whole process through completely. Then go back and watch the screen recording and take stills from that. Put all the stills I want to use in a folder and then put them in word. Then add the description of the steps. (Sometimes I combine the last two if the descriptions aren't complicated.)

Also, unless your coworker is bad at computers, you can often use fewer screenshots than you might imagine -- if you're asking them to do really obvious tasks, you don't necessarily need a screenshot. That's easier to see -- and to correct if you later feel you need one for a step where you didn't include one -- if you have the pre-existing recording to draw from.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:47 AM on August 2, 2021

Oh, another important piece: I put together a Word outline in advance, to use as my "script" when I'm recording but also to paste the transcript bits into at the appropriate places. I don't get that when other people are the expert and I am just the scribe, but in that case I usually do one listen-through of the recording on a higher speed to make the outline and then start pasting in the transcript.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:49 AM on August 2, 2021

As it happens, I'm at this moment working on a project that involves taking a bunch of SQL exports and plugging them into an Excel spreadsheet that I inherited from a friendly co-worker who left me copious documentation about the process. You know what the first thing I did when I took it over was? I re-wrote all her documentation. This is partially a learning style thing, but also, her documentation documented her thought process. I need documentation about *my* thought process, and the only person who can do that is me. So like, her documentation was very picky about exactly what to do - what cell to paste what data into and stuff like that. I don't need that specificity. I can assume that if data is labelled "Vermont" in SQL, that it will go into the Excel cell labelled "Vermont". But her documentation doesn't go into things like what that Vermont data actually is, which I find helpful in case something goes wrong. So instead of saying "copy Vermont data into cell B13", with a screenshot of cell B13, I wrote "copy state data in column B - this is the rolling 3-month paid losses, which is used to calculate the loss ratio in column G".

So my advice is to stop thinking about this as written-in-stone word-of-God documentation. Set a goal that the new person should write their own documentation, and that way your documentation just has to be good enough so that the new person understands what questions they have to ask you to get to the point where theirs can be sufficient. My personal take on the anxiety thing is that you're probably being a bit perfectionist about it, and my advice has the effect of decreasing the need for perfection.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:57 AM on August 2, 2021

The first thing I would do is set up a time with your coworker and walk them through the process and see what questions they have. They should be the ones to document their own instructions.
This is for a bunch of reasons:
1. I'm someone who used to be big on getting everything into Confluence and yet I have never seen anyone actually look for, and then find on their own, and then actually read documentation for anything they found there. It's a huge waste of time.
2. They should be taking their own notes anyway. Their own notes will be much more useful to them. They can post those notes somewhere for posterity.
3. You will have to teach it to them anyway and make sure they understand it, and have access to all the systems, and are doing it right. It's just a better use of time to work with them 1:1.
posted by bleep at 10:06 AM on August 2, 2021

Have the coworker document it. Step them through it, then shadow them while they pick up the ability to run it on their own. Ask them to be responsible for documenting the steps they go through.
posted by migurski at 11:57 AM on August 2, 2021

You can have windows do the screenshots for you if you use Problem Steps Recorder. You'd still have to edit in your comments, but at least you wouldn't have to do each individual screenshot. You might be able to combine it with the Zoom transcript idea above. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/record-steps-to-reproduce-a-problem-46582a9b-620f-2e36-00c9-04e25d784e47
posted by mareliz at 12:08 PM on August 2, 2021

When I’m doing documentation and can’t just record a 2-3 min video, I use Licecap to create a few lightweight animated GIFs, rather than dozens of screenshots. These can be pasted into Wiki pages, Word docs etc.

This turns an annoying job of creating a big wiki page or Word document with dozens of steps into a much quicker 2-3 step thing. I also find people can follow an animated GIF with 2-3 sentences of supporting text far better than a big long chain of screenshots.

Obviously this only works if the recipient isn’t printing the thing off.
posted by Happy Dave at 1:28 AM on August 3, 2021

Can you give yourself a prize and cheer for each one you do? In some senses this will slow you down more, but it means giving yourself credit for hard and otherwise unrewarding tasks. Celebrate every painful step as the win it is!!
posted by spindrifter at 10:16 AM on August 3, 2021

Definitely videos. Much more like explaining in person and less hassle. I bought the paid version of Screencast-o-matic for $14.99/yr. because it’s so much easier for work vids. A big 3 2 1 GO! comes up and it’s idiot-proof. You can also do direct training and record that but it won’t be as easy for her to use later due to the inevitable pauses and sidetracks.

Also as someone said above, very detailed Confluence or Word instructions often don’t get read and age poorly as app UIs change. What I do use Confluence or a doc for is the *context*. What is this process for? Who else knows something about it? What could go wrong? What could be improved (on this case it sounds like the whole thing could be automated with the right tools)?

So:

* a doc for overview and context
* short vid or vids for reminders if she forgets parts (short ones and not one long one)
* hands on training if you can where she asks questions and adds to the doc as needed.

The last one is important in giving her a sense of ownership . She may not feel permission to edit the docs… it drives me crazy when I create a Confluence wiki page for the team and then I find out some guy is keeping his own full OneNote file with his version of the same info . Just edit what we started with!
posted by freecellwizard at 1:58 PM on August 3, 2021