What About All These Other Documents?

Pete Birkinshaw
Having a flexible library of documents is a wonderful thing. Having a full corporate document-control system with email notifications and approvals gives you a certain amount of power, but I feel like the "sweet spot" for tech and startups is just storing documents in version control, such as Git or Subversion (svn).

These systems are often well-backed up and available remotely. In addition, they carefully track changes, can display differences between versions, and you can easily "revert" to an older version of the document, if needed.

You can check in text files, HTML or other markup languages, nicely-formatted Word or RTF documents, or binaries such as JPGs or PDFs. (note displaying document differences doesn't work for binaries). Whatever anyone sends you, you download, or even scan or photograph, can be checked in to your document store.

Other stuff you should "file" whether physically or electronically can include:

  • "Architecture" info about how the product interfaces with a server or larger system
  • "Background" documentation about the ideas that led to the product
  • Engineering or design "signoffs" that those departments are happy with the product after EVT or DVT builds
  • Compliance certifications, depending on what is legally required in the markets you're selling into
  • Company-wide or product-line guidelines; carry over learnings from related products or past problems.
  • Derivative tests for assembly-line qualification or incoming parts inspection
  • Sampling schedules, if there's anything you're aware of that ought to change the factory's default processes.
  • Nearly anything you think might be useful in the future!

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