However, I came to a startling revelation today, and that is that documentation is, 90% of the time, worthless.

Now I work in an industry that relies on documentation. Without datasheets from semiconductor manufacturers, I would be out of a job, and an industry. So when I speak of documentation here, I'm referring to "explaining to people what they should do," or, procedural and standards documentation.

It started today at work. A number of us in the lab are working on design/layout projects simultaneously for the next revision of the WiSARD. Part of this is generating schematics that not only are correct, but are readable when printed, and have some sort of versioning or tracking information printed on them. In my world, this is usually done with a sheet template (see below).

Circuit Schematic Title Block

Now, I was the first to reach this stage in my project (I had the easier project) and when I needed to know what the lab's standards were for this, I simply looked up previous schematics, and made mine match as closely as possible using the tools available. There might have been some document in the repository that explained exactly how I was supposed to accomplish this task, but I didn't even look. I simply figured it out.

I ignored the documentation because I'm intelligent enough not to need it.

A few minutes later, Dan needed to do the same thing, and Kenji asked me to show him what I did. I spent the next 5 minutes looking over his shoulder, explaining step-by-step which options to check and buttons to press. On the way back to my desk, I realized that I could have simply handed him my schematic, and had him match it. It would have saved me about 4.5 minutes, and he would have easily figured it out.

Dan could have ignored the documentation because he's intelligent enough, but I forced him to use it, and it wasted us both time.

Later that evening, I was having lunch with a friend who is involved in my school's switch between webmail providers. One of the issues they're facing is how to educate students so that they can transfer their address book between products. After only a few minutes of conversation, we declared that it didn't matter, because the intelligent users are going to take the 15 seconds to Google the answer, and the unintelligent ones aren't even going to try, they'll just call support.

The users who need the documentation, and can't figure it out on their own, aren't going to look for it. Any way you cut it, creating documentation is just a waste of time.

Now, this isn't a 100% rule, there are times, like component documentation, where you won't be able to sell your product without it. Other times, like in a reasearch or grant project, you will be required to document things. But in the cases where you have a choice, it's pretty much nailing Jello to the wall.