Documentation #

Documentation is highly underrated. It is probably the most underutilized, yet the most important factor of success. Think about any product or technology. The only thing that dictated its success long-term was its ease-of-use, and documentation is highly critical to achieve that.

Playbook & Runbook #

A Playbook outlines the project’s approach and individual responsibilities. It also describes how we will do what we are setting out to do, and sets operational expectations for any engagement.

A Runbook contains a set of instructions that outlines the steps required to complete a routine task or process such as setting up the project locally, deploying application to production, or responding to an incident. It may include helpful commands, cheat sheets, and more. Runbooks are particularly useful for defining specific actions for identified problems.

In an engagement, these documents are available to us. Also, we often define our own scripts for regular tasks or debugging applications. Playbooks and runbooks help share these scripts among the team, allowing for auditing, reviewing, and continuous improvement of the documents.