Documentation is a form of communication that allows us to share knowledge across all levels of an organizations structure, is readily available at all times, and is an essential part of a company’s best practice and improvement process. For example, through documentation, companies, employees, and clients are kept informed of business requirements for new or revamped deliverables. Information gathered from subject matter experts, from shadowing others, and from hands-on experience is explained in clearly written documents that are created for specific target audiences.

But what is the Return On Investment (ROI) of documentation? What if we didn’t have any?

Without any documentation:

• Stakeholders, clients, managers, developers, analysts, testers, etc would not have the necessary information needed to get their jobs completed with accuracy. They need technically precise information that is written in a logical and concise manner. Documentation thus breaks down highly complex models into simpler easy-to-understand concepts, processes, and procedures via workflows and content for specific targeted audiences. As an example, if test cases were not documented, Testers would not know what scenarios or scripts to work on for their user acceptance testing to ensure quality products.
• Legacy information would not be available to denote a systems structure or architecture, or to list original developers, or to communicate the knowledge for reproducing a similar system. If any developers or analysts were asked to create a similar model or project, time would be lost in researching information. They would not know, e.g., which database, platform, or system structure to use. They would have to spend time to initiate several meetings to gather all relevant information and would lose project time when all they would have had to do was refer to existing documentation.  In other words, documentation saves the company time, money, and effort when processes need to be revisited.
• Guides, manuals, marketing material, etc. would not be available to pass knowledge to consumers, clients, etc. Clearly written guides and training material are needed to provide basic understanding of fundamental key processes and concepts of the end product.
• Any new users, hires, managers, developers, etc would not have the necessary resources to assist them in understanding the functionality of existing applications. Documentation walks users through various manual processes and provides best practices for using and building products.
• Information transpired during time consuming technical meetings would be lost. Documentation is gathered for a products life cycle beginning with gathering requirements to passing data to the development team, to the testing phase, and finally to production. The content can consist of anything from its purpose to resources to various platforms and architecture.

Technical Writers  use documentation as a tool to help readers see and understand technical information more easily.  As a rule, documentation should be part of a company’s standardization process in order to avoid reinvention and duplication of a process, application, product, report, etc. This is especially needed in large corporations where there is a lot of information spread across multifunctional divisions or departments.

There really isn’t a mathematical way that I am aware of that currently measures the ROI of documentation. We know its value by the support it provides and its accomplished goal.

If you have ideas for the ROI of documentation, please leave a comment.