The Operations-to-Documentation ratio in IT and video, at least for us, is very high.  This bothers me.  I know I’ve got on my soapbox about it before, and then I always have this renewed resolve to go and make it happen.  Soon after, some new idea pops into my head for reconfiguring this or implementing that and BOOM…documentation is now out the window for the moment (again).

Now I know that as the person responsible for leading IT at the church, I should be looking out for new and better ways of doing things.  At the same time, the pattern I see myself getting into bothers me … especially in the wake of these past 2 weeks with all the health junk I had to wade through.  What if that was more serious?  What if I missed 3 months of work, rather than 4 days?

After thinking through some of this and talking it over with my boss, I decided that after finishing up a couple lingering projects, I am going to shift my focus temporarily and spend a high percentage of my time focused solely on documenting and training for the systems and processes we already have in place.  Of course, routine things like the helpdesk and backups will still happen, but I look to set aside maybe 1.5 days for that.  As for the length of this venture, I’m going to make the push for probably 2 to 3 months.

This definitely wasn’t how I planned to approach documentation at the start of the year, but more and more I’m seeing that we’ve just got to catch up with it.  While I know that we’re not going to just "arrive" in this area ever, I think this will be a big help in getting us where we need to be.

..it’s like cough syrup… and not that prissy grapetty-tasting stuff either. It’s like that cough syrup that you took as a kid; the kind that doubles as ipecac for when you ingested some cleaning product that mom kept under the sink.

• It sucks. No 2 ways about it.
• You know it’s good for you, and so you do it anyway (and it still sucks).
• You wind up being better off for going through the initial agony of it.

I’ve been working on rebuilding our domain here at NewPointe for about 3 weeks now. I’m taking my time on it because, well, it’s not an uber-urgent matter, and I want to do everything proper. A couple days ago I realized that “doing it proper” requires … yeah, you guessed it … documentation.

I stopped working on the domain stuff and fired up a wiki to document everything that’s happened so far with the new domain, starting with the domain itself, and eventually branching out to cover all the member servers. Once I’ve caught up to where I’m at, I’ll resume work on the rebuild and document as I go.

Is it fun? No, not by a long shot. However, the value of having this information typed and accessible is immeasurable.

What if, after the domain is built, I fall ill for several weeks, get hit by a bus, or find myself jobless for whatever reason? Simply put, we’d be hosed. Managing servers, much less a domain, is VERY difficult to do without proper documentation. With documentation, you can ensure that someone can come after you and keep things running, and in ministry world, that’s EXTREMELY important.

I know I’m preaching to the choir on some levels here, but I feel like this was worth taking a break to talk. Now, I’m going back to take some more cough syrup.