Who
Who is actually able to write it
The person who knows has no time, the person with time does not know, and the newcomer cannot tell which parts are unusual.
What nobody wrote down here, and what it cost
What the deploy order is
Known by one person who is in meetings
Asked rather than written, nine times
Why the import runs twice
Known by somebody who left in March
Nobody now knows, and it is asked at every incident
two things nobody wrote down · 14 occasions it cost somebody something
Two things, fourteen occasions, and one of them is now unknowable.
The Person Who Knows Has the Least Time
The person able to write a thing is the one everybody asks, which is the one with no spare hour. That correlation is structural, not bad luck.
The Newcomer Cannot Tell What Is Unusual
Somebody in their first weeks can see what is strange about a place, which nobody else can, and cannot yet tell which of it matters.
What Knowing It Makes You Leave Out
Pages written by the person who knows most are accurate and incomplete in a specific, predictable way, and the gaps are invisible to their author.
Ask the Expert to Correct, Not to Write
Twenty minutes of an expert explaining plus two hours of somebody else writing beats ninety minutes of the expert writing, and produces a better page.
Who Does It When Nobody Has Been Asked
In most teams one person writes most of what gets written, nobody asked them to, and the arrangement is fragile in a way that is invisible until they go.
Writing About Somebody Else's Work
People hesitate to document work that is not theirs. The hesitation leaves a large, easily filled gap: the owner is usually relieved rather than offended.
The One Person Who Writes Everything
When one person produces most of a team's documentation, the arrangement works until it ends, and its ending is almost impossible to notice.
Paying Somebody Whose Job It Is
Hiring somebody whose job is writing works better than most teams expect and has two specific limits, both of which are usually discovered late.