Why Documentation Fails in Engineering Teams

#documentation #engineering #architecture #devops

Documentation doesn't fail because engineers don't like to write.
It fails because teams don't design for it.

Any engineer, manager, or CTO will agree: documentation is important. It
reduces bugs, speeds up development, lowers costs, protects
institutional knowledge, and clarifies code for new engineers—and for
those returning after a long hiatus.

Yet in team after team, documentation is outdated, incomplete,
inconsistent, or simply ignored. Despite good intentions and general
agreement about its value, it still breaks down. So what's actually
going wrong?

It's not a writing problem. It's a systems problem.

When documentation fails, it's rarely because someone couldn't write. It
fails because the environment around it wasn't designed to support it.

Let's explore what's really happening, why it keeps happening, and how
to fix it.

Documentation Without Ownership

The hill documentation dies on is easy to identify, but unfortunately
it's usually discovered too late in the project. The moment
documentation becomes everyone's responsibility is the moment it starts
to go wrong—and this happens, more often than not, at the very
beginning of the process.

When documentation is assigned to "the team," what this really means is
it belongs to no one. Everyone assumes somebody else is handling it.
They have their own responsibilities, and documentation becomes
secondary. That's the problem. A system where documentation is treated
like an afterthought is a system missing one of its key elements.

Without explicit ownership, documentation turns into a mishmash of
comments, guides, and API references—loosely assembled and rarely
effective. Eventually, most teams recognize something needs to change.
That's usually when a documentation engineer like myself is brought in.
By then, however, the damage has already been done.

Ownership doesn't just mean someone who writes comments. It means
someone accountable for structure, accuracy, and completeness. It means
someone responsible for asking difficult questions—and following
through once the answers surface.

Without that role, clear and reliable documentation is unlikely.

Documentation Is Part of the Infrastructure

Most engineering teams treat documentation as something you produce once
the project is complete. That kind of thinking almost guarantees it will
be rushed and incomplete. The real problem isn't effort—it's mindset.

Documentation is not output; it's infrastructure.

What does that mean? To answer that, we have to clearly define what
documentation actually is. It's not just sprinkling comments between
blocks of code. Documentation shapes how a system is understood and
used. It helps engineers support, build, and improve the architecture.
It guides customers toward adopting system features quickly and
efficiently.

For this to happen, documentation must be developed alongside the system
itself. Decisions aren't left to be hastily assembled at the end of the
project. Testing is where edge cases reveal themselves, and they should
be documented immediately while the context is still clear.

Infrastructure is continuously maintained. Documentation should be no
different.

Documentation Requires a System

Engineers optimize for what is visible. If something lives in their
workflow, they run with it. But as anyone who has worked in software
engineering knows, if it isn't made a priority, documentation rarely
stays in plain sight.

Documentation is not optional. It has to be integrated into the
workflow. This ensures it evolves alongside the software itself. When it
isn't, documentation drifts out of alignment with the code, and
inconsistencies begin to multiply.

Guilting engineers into writing more isn't the answer. The only way to
make documentation sustainable—and keep friction low—is to integrate
it into the same workflows and mechanisms used to produce code. It needs
to be reviewable, trackable, and measurable, just like the codebase
itself.

Engineers respond to systems. Documentation should function as a
subsystem within the larger engineering whole.

It's Not Writing—It's Design

Documentation is often treated as writing, not thinking. What does that
mean? Engineering teams tend to view documentation as a translation of
the code itself. Once the system is built, that's when the work of
describing it begins. Not so.

Good documentation isn't a transcription of code. It's a living,
evolving part of the system—and to reach its full potential, it must
include elements of design.

Here's what's interesting: when you set out to clearly explain a system,
inconsistencies start to surface. Writing an API reference can reveal
confusing abstractions. The act of documenting often exposes issues the
engineering team may never have confronted directly.

If documentation is delayed until after the project is complete, these
issues surface too late—or not at all. The architecture solidifies
before its flaws are revealed through explanation.

Documenting a system helps expose its vulnerabilities.

It may come as a surprise to some engineering teams that documenting a
system as it evolves leads to a stronger, more resilient codebase.

Rethinking Documentation

Here's a simple idea: we need to rethink how documentation is created in
most software engineering teams today. The problems are clear. Some
solutions exist. But what's really required is a shift in mindset.

We need to stop thinking about documentation as writing and start
thinking about it as code.

If documentation were treated the same way we treat code, it would be: